i 



MYSTERIOUS INDIA 




A TIGER HUNT UNDEE THE GREAT MOGULS 
(From an Indo-Persian painting of the sixteenth century) 



MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

Its Rajahs - Its Brahmans - Its Fakirs 



BY 



ROBERT CHAUVELOT 



ILLUSTRATED WITH 
SIXTY PHOTOGRAPHS 



TRANSLATED BY 

ELEANOR STIMSON BROOKS 




NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1921 






Copyright, 1921, by 
The Century Co. 



SEP 22 1921 

0)CI.A622897 



TO 

THE PRINCESS AMEDEE DE BROGUE 

WHO 

HAS SEVERAL TIMES TRODDEN 

THE SACRED SOIL OF THE BRAHMANS 

I OFFER, VERY RESPECTFULLY, 

THIS "mysterious INDIA" 

IN GRATITUDE 

FOR THE KINDLY FRIENDSHIP 

WITH WHICH SHE HONORS ME 



CONTENTS 
PART I 

PTER PAGE 

Preface xiii 

I The Parsees and the Towers of Silencb 3 

II In the Bowels of Ellora 11 

III Amber the Dead and Rose-Colored Jeypore 19 

IV Hindu Wives and Widows 30 



PART II 

V There are Rajahs and Rajahs 

VI An Asiatic M.^cenas 

VII An Indian Durbar 

VIII Betrothal Under the Law of Manu 

IX The Sikh Sehrabandi .... 

X The Wedding at Kapurthala . 



47 
55 
62 

74 
85 
91 



PART III 

XI Towards the Afghan Frontier .... 103 

XII On the Rock of Gwalior 115 

XIII Two Mongolian Capitals 122 

XIV Holy Muttra 139 

XV India Once Revolted Here 147 

XVI Brahmans on the Banks of the Ganges . 156 

XVII Benares and Its Fakirs 167 

XVIII Dawn on the Himalaya 179 

vii 



via 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

XIX 

XX 

XXI 

XXII 

XXIII 

XXIV 



PART IV 

Hyderabad and Golconda . 
To THE Memory of Dupleix . 
The Temples of Coromandel . 
The Horrifying Coast of Malabar 
Madura the Mysterious 
Dead Hindu Cities 



FACE 

206 
218 
226 
240 
252 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Tiger Hunt Under the Great Moguls . Frontispiece 



FACING 
PAGE 



Bombay — The Cotton Market from Where Hundreds 
of Thousands of Bales of This Valuable Vegetable Fiber 

Are Shipped to Europe i6 

A Parade of Sikh Infantry i6 

Sikh Cavalry 17 

An Informal Reception at the Court of Jeypore; the 
Grandson of the Maharajah and the Author in the 

Center 17 

A Bayadere Dance 32 

Snake and Scorpion Charmers 32 

Threshing Out Earth-Nuts 33 

Grinding Earth-Nuts to Extract Oil 33 

H. H. Jagatjit Singh, Maharajah of Kapurthala (Punjab) 48 
H. H. Princess Brindahmati of Jubbal, Who by Her 

Marriage Became Crown Princess of Kapurthala . 49 

The Gateway to the Palace of Kapurthala .... 64 

A Brahmanic Religious Wedding 64 

Jeypore — The Palace of the Winds 65 

Benares — The Bath of the Widows 65 

The "Announcer" of a Wedding 96 

The Author on His Hunting Elephant 96 

Elephants in the Flesh and Elephants of Stone ... 97 

The Great Temple of Angkor-Vat 97 

ix 



X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 
PAGE 



Amritsar — The Temple of Gold and the Lake of Im- 
mortality 112 

Amritsar — A Street Scene ii2 

The Rock and the Plain of Gwalior 113 

The Terraces at Futtehpore Sikri, Near Agra . . . 113 

Agra — The Mausoleum of the Taj -Mahal . . . . 128 

Agra — The Sultana's Piscina . 129 

Madras — ^An Insurgent Hindu Being Taken to Prison 129 

Delhi — ^The Diwanikhas of the Great Moguls . . . 144 
Delhi — The First Imperial Enclosure and the Gate of 

Lahore 144 

Muttra — Bathing on the Banks of the Djumna . . . 145 

Muttra — The Market-Place 145 

Ruins of the Lucknow Mutiny 160 

The Palace at Lucknow 160 

Benares — ^A Low-Caste Cremation 161 

A Morning at Benares 161 

A Palace on the Banks of the Ganges 1 76 

Brahmanic Funerals on the Banks of the Ganges; to the 

Left, a Corpse in Its Shroud 176 

Benares — The Pilgrim's Ablutions 177 

Benares — ^A High-Caste Cremation 177 

Banga-Baba, the Ascetic, in His Watch-Tower, Turning 

His Back to the Ganges 184 

A Fanatic of the Sect of Siva, Proceeding on a Pilgrim- 
age by Rolling . 184 

Darjeeling (Himalaya) — ^A Thibetan Bonze and His 

Family 185 

Cawnpore — Memorial of the Massacre in 1857 . . . 185 

A Street in Hyderabad 196 

Ruins at Golconda 196 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi 



FACING 
PAGE 



H. H. Prince Aga-Khan, Religious and Political Head 

of the Mussulmans of India 197 

The Monkeys of Muttra 204 

A Sacred Elephant at the Threshold of a Temple . , 204 

Tanjore — The Great Pagoda of the Black Bull . . 205 

Tanjore — The Temple of Sobramanye 205 

Madura — The Palace of the Ancient Rajah Who Was 

Dispossessed 216 

The Sacred Rock of Trichinopoly 216 

Mongolian and Aryan Types 217 

A Sanyaski Fakir on a Journey (in the Center) . . 217 

The Pagoda of Jambukcswar, near Trichinopoly . . 240 
The Environs of Madura — The Pagoda and Pond of 

Teppa-Kulam 240 

The Car of the Juggernaut 241 

Srirangan — Entrance to the Temple 241 

Teppa-Kulam — The Temple and Statuettes of Kali the 

Slayer 256 

Madura — The Great Pagoda 256 

Boroboedoer (Java) — The Great Temple Dedicated to 

Buddha 257 

Giant Heads of Buddha of the City of Angor-Thom . 257 



PREFACE 

Flaubert could not be consoled for having to 
die without seeing Benares. The genial author of 
Salammbo, the immortal thinker of The Tempta- 
tion of Saint Anthony, never in the flesh witnessed 
those long lines of pilgrims, performing their 
morning ablutions on the banks of the Ganges, in 
the glory of the radiant East. 

It must be confessed that in the days when 
Madame Bovary gave herself up to her romantic 
dreams, in the days when that learned and sonorous 
idiot, Homais, made the bottles in his apothecary's 
laboratory tremble under the rush of his passion- 
ate Voltairian aphorisms, in those days a journey 
to India constituted neither more nor less than a 
veritable expedition by land and sea. First of all, 
one had to hoist oneself painfully into the stage 
from Rouen to Paris, then from the stage for Paris 
into the stage for Lyons, passing through Lieusaint, 
of sinister and melodramatic memory. By one 
transfer after another, one arrived, on a fine morn- 
ing, at Marseilles, bruised, exhausted, shattered 
by the successive shakings of the diligences and the 



xiv PREFACE 

uncomfortable hospitality of the inns. After that 
one had to embark from Marseilles for Gibraltar 
and set sail for the Cape of Good Hope, for Bour- 
bon Island, Port Louis and the Isle de France, and 
finally for Point de Galle, at that time the capital 
of Ceylon — in all, three long months of navigation 
in the Mediterranean, around Africa and across the 
Indian Ocean. Certainly enough to discourage 
Madame Bovary, if she was subject to seasickness I 

Today the "Cote d'Azur" express deposits you 
in one night on the quays of La Joliette whence, the 
next morning, a long steamer carries you off, to the 
strains of music, toward Egypt, once penetrated by 
"the Great Frenchman." In five days you reach 
Port Said; five more take you from Suez to 
Djibouti or to Aden ; and a final five suffice for you 
to gain the harbor of Bombay. From this point 
India today lies open to the super-tourist as does 
Java, Indo-China or New Zealand. The double 
screws and the engines of our steamships have 
made short work of distance and of oceans. It has 
become as easy to go to India as to visit the Tyrol 
or Andalusia. For this you may take the word of 
the author, who has twice found it so by personal 
experience. 

Among all the exotic countries which exercise 
a magnetic attraction upon our imagination, India 



PREFACE XV 

is perhaps the one which most powerfully stirs the 
curiosity of the reader, the artist, the fireside 
traveler. It is all very well to talk of Egypt, 
China, Palestine, Japan. But India, what a magic 
word I And how many times I have heard charm^ 
ing women murmur to me in a faraway, almost 
ecstatic voice, with that little shiver which is the 
forerunner of mysterious things: "Ah! how I envy 
you. . . . To go to India, that would be my 
dream!" 

And thereupon, in the blue or black, gray or 
green eyes of my interlocutor, as in the eyes of the 
Claire Lenoir of Villiers de ITsle-Adam, I would 
see rows of imaginary pagodas rise and take shape, 
under the silent caress of the great twisted palm- 
trees. I would seem to see in these feminine, in 
these creative eyes the tinkling defile of the ele- 
phants, decked with their scarlet trappings and 
their silver howdahs, the procession of white- 
bearded priests, the torch-bearers, the musicians, 
the dancing girls, their lids blackened with kohl, 
preceding the horde of fakirs with their gestures 
as of men possessed or mad. Yes, in the half-closed 
eyes of this woman of Paris I would distinguish it 
all clearly, this apparition of India the marvelous, 
the inviolate, unrolling in the moonlight the linked 
chain of its turbulent, sacred procession, under the 



xvi PREFACE 

hard, cruel stare of its grimacing idols with their 
many hands and feet, their terrifying smiles of love, 
grief or death! 

The truth is, there smolders, unavowed, in all 
of us, the latent fire of mystery. The enigmatic, 
everything that lies outside our everyday experi- 
ence, has for us an invincible attraction, a marked 
flavor — shall I say an irritating flavor? — like that 
of those peppery, burning curries which India also 
reveals to us. Our childhood, our early youth is 
nourished on tales — alas! so often fantastic — of 
Jacolliot, Jules Verne and their kind. Our imagi- 
nation as young people, then as grown people, is 
delighted and charmed by the accurate, poetical 
and true descriptions of Louis Rousselet, Chevril- 
lon, Pierre Loti, Jules Bois and Brieux. The word 
"rajah" brings to our ears the tinkling of gold and 
gems, a remnant of the vanished omnipotence of 
the Grand Moguls, the faraway echo of the 
trumpets of Golconda the Magnificent, town of 
dreams and city of diamonds. Does someone men- 
tion fakirs in our presence? Immediately we call 
up, with the help of our imagination, a panorama 
of pictured thoughts. On the threshold of an old, 
ruined temple, invaded by the jungle, stands a man 
with burning eyes, turbaned, half naked, fright- 
fully emaciated. His gaze seems lost in the Be- 



n 



PREFACE xvii 

yond. He is externalizing himself, murmuring 
confused, indistinct, broken words. . . . And sud- 
denly the miraculous power of his obstinate will 
makes the grain sprout, bursting the double sheath 
of its seed-leaf with the running sap and the sun- 
ward urge of its leaves, which grow and turn green 
in an instant. Let us confess it; the contrast of 
this power and this poverty in the fakir delights our 
spirit with its appetite for paradox. In the same 
way we are charmed by the juxtaposition, the con- 
tact, in spite of the abyss of the castes, of the 
dazzling prince and the abject pariah. Extremes 
meet in India, the still recent memory of the Dur- 
bar, for example, as oppressive as it was grandiose, 
and the frightful vision of famines past and to 
come. 

But we must be on our guard against these 
frights of fireside fancy, we must beware of this 
general tendency, so natural to our Latin tempera- 
ment, to enlarge and exaggerate everything, to see 
everything poetically through the prism of our 
exuberant optimism! ... By manufacturing for 
ourselves too far in advance an artificial and 
fictitious India, we risk losing our dearest illusions, 
one by one, before the reality of facts. Without 
doubt, India is beautiful, grand, moving. Yet I 
dare to affirm that far more than anything else it is 



XVI 11 



PREFACE 



interesting. "Interesting" is, indeed, the word, that 
seems to me most suited to this immense reservoir 
of thinking humanity. The adjective "beautiful" 
suits her only partially, in certain regions scattered 
over the map, and of w^hich the North, the Hima- 
laya especially, is the chief crov^n. In other parts 
there is nothing but melancholy plains, arid deserts, 
brackish and dried-up pools. The jungle itself, so 
rich and luxuriant in the northern parts of the Em- 
pire, is often nothing but tall and sunbaked under- 
brush, of which the tropical vegetation consists 
principally of aloes and cacti. 

One of the most fascinating of our fashionable 
women, who had just returned from India, spoke 
to me only the other day of her disenchantment and 
her annoyances. 

"Ah, Monsieur," she exclaimed, "what a disillu- 
sion I have just experienced ! I who was expecting 
to go from fairyland to fairyland! Not a single 
tiger did I see in the jungle, and very few ele- 
phants in the towns ; nowadays the rajahs go about 
in aeroplanes and automobiles! As for the baya- 
deres, I could make nothing out of their dances; 
they bored me to death. And then what a lack 
of comfort everywhere, what detestable food ! In 
the South, no hotels; one is obliged to sleep in the 
railway stations. If one only could sleep! But it 



PREFACE xlx 

is impossible: the heat, the noise, the mosquitoes! 
. . . Ah! How my husband and I regretted the 
Nile boats and the great Egyptian palaces!" 

Do not smile; this arraignment, however super- 
ficial it may appear to you, is not absolutely with- 
out foundation. A journey in India, even in our 
day of luxury and progress, is still a laborious mat- 
ter, fatiguing and sometimes even disagreeable. 
But how enthralling for those who are willing to 
look for other things than tigers, elephants, dan- 
cing girls and the gipsy orchestras at afternoon tea. 

India! 

It is an open book, in which each — just as with 
the "Imitation" — may chance upon what fits his 
own case. To the philosopher it opens an un- 
limited field of new horizons, thoughts, concepts, 
from which he can glean a thousand lessons in 
ethics or in pure metaphysics. To the ethnogr 
rapher, to the writer, India appears as a cradle of 
humanity from which almost all the European and 
Asiatic races have sprung, from which we ourselves 
come, and whose history, religion and customs 
stretch back age beyond age. The scientist, the 
physician will gather evidence there about the 
supreme ills of our poor flesh; the theosophist and 
the spiritualist will study there from the life the 
most extraordinary phenomena of hypnotism and 



XX PREFACE 

mediumistic possession; the artist will be en- 
raptured by the strength or the delicacy of the high 
and low reliefs, the architectural designs, the 
exquisiteness of the traceries, the detail of the old 
miniatures. . . . And all, after having admired 
this India of the North, which has sprung from the 
Koran, Moslem with the exception of Jeypore, 
Gwalior and Benares, — all will wish to delve more 
deeply still into Brahmanism, by visiting that 
prodigious, that often terrifying Tamil India of 
the South: the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel. 

May this work — brought together from notes 
taken in the course of two recent trips and having 
the further advantage that it is suitable to be placed 
in any hands — help to lift a corner of the curtain 
that still hides from our profane eyes the secret of 
the rajahs, the Brahmans and the fakirs] 

But is not this to lay one's hand on the veil of 
Tanit? 

R. C. 



H 



PART I 



MYSTERIOUS INDIA 



CHAPTER I 

THE PARSEES AND THE TOWERS OF SILENCE 

The disciples of Zarathustra — The Armenians of India — ^A 
chapter on hats — In the Parsee quarter — Two funeral pro- 
cessions — A trip to the Towers of Silence — The vultures' 
quarry. 



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HE chief curiosity of Bombay, that 
which first catches one's eye as one 
steps ofif the steamer, is the sight of 
these grave worthies, with their 
skins of the color of brown bread, 
wearing spectacles, wearing strange 
head-dresses, half-European, half-Asiatic, who 
seem a sort of necessary link between the East and 
the West. 

These Parsees — numbering today, in Bombay 
alone, upwards of fifty thousand — constitute, it 
must be recognized a veritable elite. Marvelous- 

3 



4 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

ly gifted as regards practical affairs, born business 
men, they have taken charge for twelve hundred 
years, that is to say since their immigration from 
Persia, not only of all the great commercial enter- 
prises, but also of all the enviable posts, of all the 
most sought after situations in the Administration. 
They are the Armenians of India. I may add that 
they profess for France, its generous ideas and its 
glories, the most touching filial respect. Most of 
them — especially the rich — learn French, speak it 
and teach it with real love. Not merely does the 
Parsee chancellor of our consulate, M. Jamsetjee 
Sorabjee Settna, although he has never set foot in 
France, speak with the correctness of word and 
phrase of a graduate of the Sorbonne, but the gov- 
ernment of the Republic, touched by so much good 
will and such perseverance, has granted to this 
zealous servitor the favor of the commission of an 
officer of the Academy. And you should see with 
what pride that worthy man wears, over his white 
jacket, both the violet ribbon . . . and the silver 
palms I 

The bigotry of the castes — to which I shall have 
occasion to return in the course of these essays on 
India — the bigotry of the castes does not exist 
among the disciples of Zarathustra, the sun-wor- 
shipers, except in a quite embryonic state. 



TOWERS OF SILENCE $ 

Actually they are divided into two classes: the 
Irani, the civilized Parsees, and the Schencha'i, the 
barbarous Parsees. The former may be recog- 
nized by their striking head-dresses, either the 
topy, 2i melon-shaped construction of gray felt with 
rolled borders, or the pagri, a bishop's miter of 
blue foulard with small white dots, stiffened with 
a sort of gum or varnish. Add to the strangeness 
of these head-dresses the habit of wearing gold eye- 
glasses or spectacles, which give them an odd 
suggestion of Japanese doctors. ... As for the 
Schencha'i, they are generally poor devils in rags, 
whose heads are covered with a turban that has 
nothing original about it. 

"A difference in headgear, that's alll" I was 
smilingly assured by a rich Parsee of the upper 
class, who was thoroughly grounded in all matters 
European and Asiatic and a profound philosopher 
in his leisure hours. "Our religious equality is in 
no way affected by it." 

"Even in the interior of your temples?" I sug- 
gested; "even on the threshold of death?" 

"Even in the interior of our temples 1 Even on 
the threshold of death!" he repeated with inde- 
scribable firmness. 

And immediately after, as if to make himself 
clear, "I cannot let you enter any of the seven 



6 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

sanctuaries of our religion in Bombay. That is 
forbidden mc, on pain of the severest penalties, 
and besides, my conscience, as a professing Parsee, 
would not allow me to do so. I regret it, for then 
you would be able to judge of the unity of our 
brothers in prayer. But if you would like to see 
how we die, rich or poor, noble or workman, come 
to my house early tomorrow morning. I will ar- 
range it so that you can be present at two funerals 
after our rite, which we shall accompany to the 
wickets of the Towers of Silence on Malabar 
Hill. There you can verify our equality in death 1 
On one condition, however. . . ." 

"Which is?" 

"Give me your word of honor to suppress my 
name if ever the fancy seizes you to write about 
these things. . . ." 

"You have it." 

And I shall keep my promise. 

This is what I repeat to myself as I make my 
way to the house of my obliging cicerone who 
lives in Parsia, the quarter of Bombay where dwell 
his co-religionists, in great white or yellow houses, 
four or five stories high. Together we now mount 
a crowded street dominated by the pagri, the na- 
tional miter of varnished foulard. What a lot of 



TOWERS OF SILENCE 7 

gold spectacles! Are far-sightedness and near- 
sightedness the fashion here? 

But look, at the entrance of a prosperous house, 
and a little further on, near the door of a miserable, 
broken-down dwelling, there, on one side and an- 
other, is quite a large gathering of people, grave, 
bearded men, all clad in white, silent, seated on 
old wooden benches that encumber the road. 

"These are the relations and friends of the two 
dead men," my guide whispers in my ear. "They 
alone will presently accompany the body. The 
parents and wives will remain in the home of the 
dead, drowned in tears, sobs and prayers. As for 
the white robes that seem to attract your attention, 
it is the customary mourning worn by our men. 
The women wear black, as you do in Europe." 

Slowly the first procession sets out — a white lit- 
ter, hermetically sealed, carried on the shoulders 
of eight white-gloved bearers, while those who are 
to walk fall in line behind it, their hands clasped 
on their foreheads, with the most edifying signs 
of compassion. Inwardly I am amazed at the 
singular mixture of idealism and superstition in 
the members of this sect, who have a horoscope 
cast at their birth, who abstain from smoking, for 
fear of profaning the fire, and who, in order to 
purify themselves, drink the urine of a bull mixed 



8 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

with water that has been drawn by moonlight. 
Now we are climbing up the slope of Malabar 
Hill, the adorable little rise of palms that crowns 
the peninsula of Bombay, strewn with palaces and 
gay villas among clumps of acacias and cocoanut, 
banana and mimosa trees. Further on, emerging 
from the dense tropical foliage, there are five mas- 
sive, gray towers, five smooth, round turrets, each 
one pierced by a single opening, a black, grilled 
gate, beneath which, by stooping, two men can 
enter from the front. 

The Towers of Silence, the horrible and mag- 
nificent cemetery of the Parsees! . . . Why must 
this sunny, dreamy corner, this flowery paradise, 
this perfumed air, this riot of colors conceal the 
fearful spectacle of this quarry-to-be and the place 
of decay? 

The bearers of the white litter have entered a 
shady lane which leads to one of the five towers. 
Above their heads wheel birds of prey, great and 
small, eagles, kites and buzzards, which in a few 
minutes will seize with their gray beaks the leav- 
ings of the vultures' feast. 

The vultures I I can distinguish them now on 
their funereal perch. At the sound of steps they 
stretch out their skinny necks; bending greedily 
towards the approaching prey, they gobble joy- 



TOWERS OF SILENCE 9 

ously on the top of the tower and swing their eager, 
gluttonous heads heavily from left to right. 

But a hand is placed on my shoulder. 

"We must stop here. You can go no further. 
Look; from this little knoll you can see the black 
wicket open and the vultures fling themselves into 
the interior to accomplish the work of destruction 
prescribed by the Zend-Avesta." 



Ah, what a sinister vision I That clicking lock, 
that half-open wicket, those bearers bending down 
and slipping in, carrying a long, white object. . . . 
A few minutes. . . . Then a second click. The 
funereal men have accomplished their task, they 
are returning among the living. And now there 
is a furious commotion which I cannot see but 
which I hear: a battle of hooked beaks, a concert 
of harsh, discordant cries. 

"Come," says the guide, "in twenty minutes it 
will all be over. Besides, what is the use of re- 
maining? You could not understand. Our re- 
ligion, you see, forbids us to destroy our dead by 
Water, Earth or Fire — that is, to soil the three 
elements by the impure contact of our corpses. 
So we leave it to the vultures, to the sun, to the 



10 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

waters of heaven to destroy our 'vestments of fiesh 
and bone' and return them to the earth." 

"So you, who are speaking to me at this moment, 
in such choice language, with so clear an intelli- 
gence, you, an Irani of the upper class, almost or 
better than a European, you will be torn, slashed 
shred from shred by these hideous creatures?" 

"I as well as the others. ... As well as this 
second one whose procession is approaching. . . . 
As well as those that will come here tomorrow and 
the day after. Thus teaches Zarathustra. And be- 
sides, do you not think that, as between the worms 
of the tomb and the vultures of the open air, it is 
all one in the end?" 

And beneath the sapphire sky of India, under 
these vivid, luxuriant palms, surrounded by these 
rare flowers and these penetrating perfumes, it 
seems to me that this gold-bespectacled Parsee has 
just paraphrased, without knowing it, the great 
thought of Schopenhauer, summing up the vicious 
circle of the human race: 

"Death is the Reservoir of Life; Life is the 
Reservoir of Death." 



^^^^!^ 




CHAPTER II 




IN THE BOWELS OF ELLORA 

Across desert India — The discomfort of Indian inns — "Give 
the chick back to its mother!" — An improvised guide — In 
the heart of the mysterious caverns — Monolith buildings 
vi^ith neither joint nor cement — ^The caves of the bats. 

LLORA, the place of the Hindu 
catacombs! A sense of grandeur 
and terror grips you from the mo- 
ment you enter these somber cav- 
erns, from the mouths of which 
escape whififs of dank air, the sep- 
ulchers of gods and goddesses, infinitely colder 
and more austere than, for example, the cheerful 
Egyptian vaults of Sakkarah. 

It is no easy matter to reach them, and far from 
comfortable to make even a short stay in their 
neighborhood. You must first cross immense, 
desert plains, dried-up, scorched, cracked, almost 
in the center of India, where the vegetation con- 
sists principally of aloes, cacti, paw-paws, man- 
goes, tamarinds, acacias and banana trees — a stony, 

II 



12 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

yellowed landscape that savors of autumn. Fare- 
well, great palms of Bombay 1 Here and there 
are crumbling ruins, the names of towns that sound 
like the click of a sword: Aurengabad, Daulata- 
bad, famous cities over which the Grand Moguls 
once extended their sway. Today, they are nothing 
but heaps of ruins crowned with underbrush. A 
few poor wretches inhabit these solitudes, sharing 
them with the beasts of the jungle. 

I have spoken of all the discomfort of such an 
expedition and I return to it with the charitable 
hope of helping others to avoid the little annoy- 
ances that befell me. From Daulatabad, the rail- 
way station at which one alights, to Ellora there 
is no other means of transportation than a miser- 
able wagon, drawn by wretched horses over an 
execrable road. Gomel It is written I I shall 
make half the trip on foot. This gives me the ap- 
petite of an ogre when, having passed Rozas, the 
Mohammedan settlement, I at last, with what de- 
light, catch sight of the little wayside inn, pom- 
pously decorated with the name "Traveler's Bun- 
galow." Horrors! I am to sleep in a room that is 
not a room ; no tooth-mug, only a chipped cup ; the 
only linen a single rumpled towel that has un- 
doubtedly already served other unfortunates like 
myself. Really, my desire to visit these grottoes 



IN THE BOWELS OF ELLORA 13 

must be desperate indeed for me to sit down in that 
limping rocking-chair which is enough to make me 
seasick, a feeling I have never known before. And 
this dinner I No bread, nothing but rice, a box 
of old, rancid sardines imported from Portugal 
put up in cocoanut oil from Goa; tea that smells 
like the straw of a stable . . . and other infamies 
of the same stamp. The coolie, a sort of Handy 
Andy, is lost in excuses, bobbing his head after the 
Indian fashion. My grimaces have made an im- 
pression on him ; he will go and prepare something. 
It is seven o'clock in the evening. I am drop- 
ping of fatigue and hunger. In twenty minutes, 
at the latest, I must swallow my rice and sardines 
while I try to think of something else — The Dis- 
course on Method, for example, or Plato's Ban- 
quet (what irony, that banquet!), in short, of some 
very serious, grave or philosophical subject, in 
order to forget my plight. I have often used this 
method: believe me, it is the best device for intro- 
ducing stoically into one's stomach the nondescript 
food of certain exotic countries. Handy Andy re- 
turns, triumphantly bearing in his hands a live 
chick which would have grown into a fowl if Fate 
had not predestined him to serve as my principal 
dish. I utter a cry of anguish, both for the little 
beast which looks at me with its round, imploring 



MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

eyes, and for my stomach, which refuses to accept 
a bird that may still be agitated by its last agonies. 
I know their method of preparing chickens: they 
boil them alive, then pluck them and clean them 
and bring them to you with no other seasoning 
than a handful of salt. 

''Djao! Djaof Take it awayl" 

And he goes ofif, his head hanging, his rejected 
offering in his hand. 

In India I have killed many mosquitoes perhaps, 
and even, to be frank, plenty of other parasites — 
more indiscreet. At least I have restored a chick 
to its mother. 



My real feast is the grottoes. 

Innumerable, diverse, shadowy as the dark 
Erebus of Minos, ^Eacus and Rhadamanthus. All 
the cults of the peninsula, except that of Islam, 
are represented here: Brahmans, Buddhists and 
Jains may pray here in peace, hidden in the depths 
of the earth. Grimacing, sneering and gesticulat- 
ing, according to their design, here are Siva, Vish- 
nu, Kali, Sombramanye, Ganesa, Durga, Hanu- 
man and Karrtikaye ; here, also, the enigmatic and 
ironical smile of those ecstatic Gautamas, those 
twenty or more Jain prophets who seem to be hold- 
ing council. But heavens! how primitive are all 



IN THE BOWELS OF ELLORA 15 

the arrangements for visiting — excuse me! explor- 
ing — these grottoes! I can easily see why the 
stranger, attracted by the profusion of other things 
to be seen in India, deliberately disdains this pil- 
grimage of art and mystery. No accredited guides 
or obsequious conductors to serve as your Ariadne 
in this labyrinth. What in the world am I to do 
with my boy, whose understanding does not equal 
that of the lowest Brahman? . . . Fortunately, 
here comes a native who is going to rescue us from 
our predicament. He salutes me gravely and cere- 
moniously, squats down and draws out of his loin- 
cloth two living partridges with their legs tied 
together. What does all this mean? My good 
native servant, Subbaraya, rubs his hands, laugh- 
ing silently. Cock-fighting is one of his favorite 
amusements. Yes, but this is not what interests 
me: it's a misdeal! A brief conversation takes 
place between the two good fellows. A miracle! 
The juggler whisks away his two partridges 
and transforms himself instantly into the guide and 
interpreter of Ellora. He knows these ruins by 
heart, being a native of Rozas, the neighboring 
hamlet. Let us be off then ! 

A few hundred meters and we are at the foot of 
a circular plateau which rises above the limitless 
plain like a cliff. In the interior of this natural 



i6 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

circle the hand of man has, in the course of cen- 
turies, dug out a series of excavations to shelter 
the gods. There are thirty-four of them, certain 
of which are inter-communicating. I shall con- 
tent myself with visiting the principal ones, about 
fifteen in all. Without a guide one might be lost 
or even killed. Into these caverns we grope our 
way by the light of a dim lantern. First of all we 
come to that pure marvel called Kailas, a temple 
entirely carved out of the wall of massive granite. 
It is an excavation by itself, on the plateau ; not a 
single joint, not a bit of masonry in the sculptured 
portals or the towers. Here dwells Kali, the Im- 
modest. Next come Tin-Tal and Do-Tali, two 
Buddhist caverns with less ornamentation. In 
each of them is enthroned an enormous Buddha, 
with mustaches and piously vermilioned by the 
few faithful who, at the same time, also daubed 
over the nine genii of Fortune. As I come out of 
these twin chapels, piercing cries rise from the 
plain that stretches at my feet. It is some peasants, 
perched on their platforms, watching the harvest; 
the poor devils are splitting their throats shouting, 
while they wave sticks and pitchforks to protect 
their meager crops from the voracity of the rats, 
the birds and the buffaloes. A land of famine, 




BOMBAY — THE COTTON MARKET FROM WHERE HUNDREDS OF THOU- 
SANDS OF BALES OF THIS VALUABLE VEGETABLE FIBER ARE 
SHIPPED TO EUROPE 




A PARADE OF SIKH INFANTRY 



^ 




-f\\ 


J ,^1 


^ 


t. .^ 




■1 


*" 





SIKH CAVALRY 




AN INFORMAL RECEPTION AT THE COURT OF JEYPORE; THE 
GRANDSON OF THE MAHARAJAH AND THE AUTHOR IN THE 
CENTER 



IN THE BOWELS OF ELLORA 17 

alas ! in which beasts and men dispute bitterly for 
the means of existence. 

Further on is the grotto of Vichwakarma, an- 
other Buddhist sanctuary endowed with a semi- 
circular vault and pillars at the side like a church. 
In the choir, if I may so call it, a pointed niche con- 
tains a great Sakya-Muni, dreamy and benevolent 
(but why this rage always to decorate his lips with 
mustaches !) . Everywhere is the odor of the tomb ; 
at moments I stifle in this rarefied air, polluted 
by the excrement of the vampire bats. And I turn 
only an inattentive ear to the echo which I hear 
resounding under this nave of the catacombs, re- 
bounding from wall to wall. Let us go on, by all 
means; I feel ill at ease. My two companions 
climb like goats over rubbish where I risk break- 
ing my neck a hundred times. Still other excava- 
tions belong to the Buddhist group, in which the 
sobriety of decoration attests the desired austerity. 
Then chapels . . . endless chapels! And always 
under these vaults the horrid grinding of the 
vampire bats! 

At last we are in the Brahman zone, the most 
important of all, which alone includes seventeen 
caves, all of the eleventh century: Das-Avatar, 
Rameshber, Nilakantha, marvelously sculptured 
temples, commemorating the loves of Siva and 



i8 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

Parvati; Durmar-Lena, which resembles the 
grotto of Elephanta, near Bombay, and like it pos- 
sesses admirable stone lions at the entrance, black 
linghams, white yonis and all the disconcerting, 
cynical, triumphant attributes of the Destroyer. 

There are other Jain caverns, adorably sculp- 
tured, filigreed. It all amazes, delights, ravishes 
and terrifies one, but it does not touch one. What 
is lacking among all these marvels, these prodi- 
gies, these immense halls, these vertiginous stair- 
ways, these unexpected terraces, these openwork 
balconies, these headless bell-towers, is the pres- 
ence and the piety of the people, which gives 
everything its life. 

Underground cathedrals, fathomless, terrifying, 
which Divinity, itself, is weary of inhabiting. 



CHAPTER III 



AMBER THE DEAD AND ROSE-COLORED JEYPORE 

In Rajputana — Disaster — A "Sleeping-city-in-the-wood" — 
Rose-colored Jeypore — A royal tea — Stonecutters and 
fakirs — The miracle of the serpent — ^The State tigers. 




INCE yesterday I have been in Raj- 
putana, now fertile and cultivated, 
now arid and parched, like the 
country, for example, bordering on 
the bleak desert of Thur. I am 
making my way toward Jeypore, 
where with some delightful friends I hope to be 
received by the Maharajah of the independent 
State of the same name. A slight mishap awaits 
me; the prince is seriously ill and to his great 
regret cannot receive us. Nevertheless, we shall 
be his guests, graciously entertained by his brother 
and his nephews. A herald clad in scarlet and 
silver braid so informs us in almost impeccable 
English. We shall be taken on elephant-back to 
Amber, the ancient capital, today a dead and 

mysterious city; they are to organize, in our 

19 



20 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

honor, a polo game (we must not forget that this 
game is of Indian origin) ; the princes will offer 
us refreshments at the palace of the king's uncle; 
in short, they will try to palliate the absence of 
His Highness, who shows himself sincerely grieved 
by the incident. All this is delivered to us with 
many smiles, salutations and bobbings of the head 
« — in this country one of the greatest marks of 
politeness — in a soft, melodious, whispering voice. 

Let us make the best of our misfortune; as a 
matter of fact, there is so much to see in this Jey- 
pore and this Amber that perhaps we shall have 
no cause to regret the complete freedom of our 
movements. 

In the distance rise the outskirts of the Rose- 
colored City — so-called because, by royal decree, 
all its buildings, arcades, colonnades, balconies 
and shutters must be rose-colored, barely relieved, 
here and there, by timid white arabesques. This 
morning, on the Amber road, we are no longer 
passing the long lines of buffaloes and drome- 
daries, their pack-saddles laden with merchandise, 
which have just been threading the streets of Jey- 
pore. We are evidently in the outskirts. Along 
the dusty road, bordered by aloes, we now meet 
peasants leading poor carts fastened to zebus with 
horns painted vermilion, which are drawing rice, 



I 



ROSE-COLORED JEYPORE 21 

fruits and vegetables to town. At a turn of the 
road, some elephants file past, ranged in a circle 
about their mahouts. Our royal vehicles, no 
doubt 1 In fact, one of the king's stewards hastens 
up to us, to explain to us the proper fashion of 
making the perilous ascent of the pachyderms. 
The monstrous beasts have knelt down docilely, 
at the prick of the steel on the point of their ears; 
a little portable ladder slips from their back to 
the ground and by means of this we reach the seat 
of the howdah. Almost directly in front of us a 
well-paved road, slightly winding, bordered by a 
parapet, cuts at right angles, about five hundred 
meters away, the first wall of Amber. 

As our elephants enter the gates of the palace, 
our watches mark ten o'clock. The sun in all its 
splendor illuminates, transfigures the ruins which 
surround us and throws a glitter over the little 
lake of Tal-Koutora. Still preceded by the stew- 
ard, we set out to walk through the halls of the 
ancient dwelling where the fancy of the Rajput 
kings brought together, as regards decoration, 
every sort of refinement the human mind could 
conceive. We are dazzled by the phantasmagory 
of mosaics, porcelain, glass and gold. Here is 
the Dewankhana, or Hall of Mirrors, where the 
monarch used to give audiences. Under the 



22 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

double row of columns which support a massive 
entablature and along the walls covered with 
stucco, runs a profusion of interlaced lines, de- 
signs, birds and flowers, the details of which recall, 
in their infinite complication, the style of the 
palaces of Jahangir and Ranjit-Singh, at Lahore, 
— an architecture distinctly Mohammedan in its 
origin, in which the kings of Amber were never- 
theless careful to show their profound faith in 
Brahmanism. This impression rises from the 
frescoes, for the most part rather coarse, which 
represent allegorically this or that religious myth. 
Now it is the good Ganesa, the elephant-god, with 
his many arms, his trunk falling down in a spiral 
over his abdomen; now Karttikeya, the peacock- 
god, who presides over war; or Hanuman, the 
monkey-god, the friend of man, a hero celebrated 
in more than one epic page of the Rdmdyana. Next 
we penetrate into the ancient harem, today acces- 
sible to profane Europeans. The facets of the 
vaultings, made of ancient mirrors, now dim and 
tarnished, still reflect imperfectly the alcoves, the 
raised seats, the fishpond, where, after the bath 
and the massage, the ranees used to rest. All these 
apartments, carefully shut in with screens of white 
marble open-work, overhang like a terrace the nar- 
row gorge in which lay the Capital. How many 



ROSE-COLORED JEYPORE 23 

dramas of love and jealousy have these walls of 
lace-work sheltered ? How many stifled sobs, over- 
whelming despairs, cries of pain perhaps? 

Today Amber still guards the anguish of these 
mysteries. The dead city, swallowed up in ver- 
dure, smothered under stifling vines, seems like a 
city of destruction glimpsed in an opium dream. 
Ruined temples, crumbling porticoes, tumble- 
down stairways, over-grown gardens, dried up 
ponds. Far off the interminable wall, running 
the length of the valley, barring the pass with its 
lofty pinnacles. Beyond, mountains, and again 
mountains. . . . 

And the desert, the yellow, arid desert, which 
seems as if it could never end. 

Why have the present sovereigns quitted this 
poetic and majestic residence to build an infinity 
of palaces on the flat bottom of the plain, without 
any extensive view, in the midst of a great, almost 
modern city (it dates from our Renaissance) with 
rectilinear streets which give it a sort of vague 
suggestion of New York or Alaska? 

This is the question which I quite naturally ask 
the princes who offer us refreshments next day, 
after a closely disputed polo match. They tell me 
this decision resulted from a caprice of Jay Singh. 



24 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

This rajah astronomer, who lived in the sixteenth 
century, had studied in European books the norms 
of cosmography, the theorems of the heavenly tri- 
angulation, and the chief hypotheses concerning 
the moving stars. A thinker as well as a statesman, 
he had known how to maintain an era of prosperity 
in his kingdom, while at the same time refreshing 
his mind with analytical mathematics and the most 
delicate and arduous cosmological researches. 
From this to having an observatory built in his 
capital was only a step. He himself oversaw it, 
to make sure that the foundations wer® exactly 
square and level; then he had gigantic sextants, 
theodolites and compasses set up in the plain, for 
which he himself drew up the designs, watching 
over the building of the finely cut foundations, rec- 
tifying the drawings, and laying the first stone of 
a pavilion designed to shelter his calculations and 
his classified diagrams. The rest, palace, gardens, 
rose-colored city followed this costly and charac- 
teristically Hindu caprice. The story is told me 
by a nephew of the maharajah, a slender young 
man with a fine, black mustache and large jet- 
black eyes, the winner in the polo match which I 
have just watched. I promise him that I will not 
fail to visit the observatory of his illustrious ances- 
tor, although in mathematics I remain myself at 



ROSE-COLORED JEYPORE 25 

the square of the hypotenuse of my bachelor's 
degree. 

They offer us an Indian collation: rice cakes, 
cakes of pounded almonds, sinister looking pre- 
serves, disturbing sweets which we touch only with 
the tips of our teeth. Suppose it were mandrake 
jelly, or preserved tiger's mustaches! BrrI Such 
things have been! Not for the benefit of inoffen- 
' sive French travelers, but for that of the detested 
English functionaries. Our hosts, it is true, have 
good faces — were it not for those ferociously 
turned-up Rajput beards of theirs. 

A charming attention is now reserved for us. 
By royal command, all the jewelers and goldsmiths 
of the city have been requisitioned. There they 
arc before us, spreading out their baskets, letting 
the pearls of Ceylon trickle through our fingers, 
the rubies of Burmah, the diamonds of Punnah, 
translucent enamels over gold foundations, brace- 
lets, rings, necklaces. They are not trying to force 
our hands, as I thought at first; it is only a gracious 
thought on the part of our hosts, and a platonic 
compliance on the part of the jewelers. Our 
Parisian women are enraptured, but do not allow 
themselves to be tempted. As I have since been 
able to convince myself, many of these trinkets 
have been made in response to princely and other 



26 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

orders; the prices asked are usually higher, by at 
least a third, than those of our rue de la Paix. 
Discreetly, with many smiles, bows and prostra- 
tions, the merchants collect their jewel caskets and 
make off with padded, feline steps, to give place 
to fakirs, jugglers and conjurors. 

Before our eyes, somewhat blase, but deferen- 
tial none the less, mangoes sprout and grow, eggs 
and fishes appear and vanish, mongooses and cob- 
ras fight and kill each other, till the moment when, 
irritated by our involuntary apathy, the fakir 
juggles himself away. An inexplicable and truly 
curious trick. That worthy curls himself up in a 
low basket, shaped like a flattened jar. Over him 
a companion shuts down the lid, also of wicker- 
work, invokes his "monkey's skull" (the ring of 
all the Robert Houdins of India) and pierces the 
basket in all directions with his sword. Better 
yet, he lifts up the cover, jumps with both feet 
into the basket, stamps all over it, picks it up in 
his arms, turns it upside down and shows it to us. 
Nothing! It is empty! More passes by the assis- 
tant, and the basket is filled again. In spite of my 
skepticism, I am forced to bow before the reality 
of facts. It is impossible, moreover, to explain 
this experience except, perhaps, by the aid of some 
suggestion they have forced upon us. If that is the 



ROSE-COLORED JEYPORE 27 

case, we have been "fakirized," if I may call it 
so. What a humiliation for a wide-awake, well- 
regulated citizen! 

Another trick, even more stupefying. From a 
goatskin bottle the juggler — this one is certainly 
clever — draws a living adder and turns it over to 
a mongoose, who makes but one mouthful of it. 
The reptile, bitten and torn everywhere, pierced 
all over by the sharp teeth of his adversary, is no 
longer anything but a bloody rag. This remnant, 
chewed and almost in shreds, twists lamentably 
about on the ground. The fakir thereupon seizes 
it between his first finger and thumb and extends 
it on its back. Then he murmurs some strange 
words and with his thumbnail gently strokes sev- 
eral times the white scales of the belly. This 
caress, repeated several times, is, properly speak- 
ing, nothing but the lightest touch, it is not even 
a massage. . . . And behold, little by little, the 
creature comes to life again, contracts and distends 
itself, twists about and finally, with a violent blow 
of its tail, restores itself to its original and normal 
axis. It is the return of life, complete and whole: 
crawling, dartings of a fierce tongue, everything 
has come back as if by enchantment; the flat and 
flabby body has swelled up again as if some new 
sap had suddenly revivified it. It is impossible to 



28 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

suspect a substitution: it is certainly the same 
adder; I recognize it by its still bleeding wounds. 
Let who will explain it. ... / have seen this/ 

How enigmatical these people are ! On certain 
sides quite childish, at times profound thinkers and 
philosophers, and whether submissive or in revolt, 
always grave, they positively disconcert me. Is 
this amazing juggler actually of the same race as 
these lazy strollers whom I meet now, hand in 
hand, in the Mohollo Kamnigar or goldsmith's 
quarter? How prosaic are these grain merchants, 
crouching on their doorsills, these youths who, as 
they walk, are drying in the sun long pieces of 
damp cloth, these children playing about among 
the pigeons pecking in the square of Manak- 
Chowk. Nevertheless, from such as these, from 
these Aryans, have come the Yogis, the contem- 
platives, the thaumaturgists who confound our 
most subtle metaphysicians. . . . 

On the sidewalks, cluttered with pigeons, 
women pass, their nostrils pierced with a silver 
ring, their arms and ankles loaded with tinkling 
bracelets; their veils and saris giving, amid the 
huckstering of the merchants and the idle chatter, 
a note of grace and rhythm. From afar come dull, 
hoarse growls from th6 nine cages of the public 
menagerie of Cherouka-Pindjera, where, at his 



ROSE-COLORED JEYPORE 29 

own expense, His Highness supports the State 
tigers. 

Curious, indeed, this people, who neglect to re- 
lieve the misery and sickness of human beings in 
order to provide food for their natural enemies, 
the wild beasts! 



^is;^^ 



CHAPTER IV 



HINDU WIVES AND WIDOWS 




The sad fate of the women — The humanity of the English — 
The work of Lady Dufferin, ex-Vicereine of India — The 
law of Manu and its cruel articles — Plebeians and patri- 
cians — Dramas of the women's quarters. 

GENERAL study of India, that 
fairylike, marvelous land of tu- 
multuous, fanatical, suffering hu- 
manity, is a sufficiently bold task. 
There are so many contrasts in it 
to the ordinary conceptions of our 
European minds! 

Are we interested in the situation of the Hindu 
women? Then we fall into the midst of a paradox. 
No betrothed girl, no wife, no widow in the 
universe leads a life so painful, so rigorous, so 
closely shut in. I have traveled all over Europe 
and the Northern countries, I have seen the dis- 
tress of the women among the nomad peoples of 
the extreme North, I have also had an opportunity 

to observe the physical imprisonment and moral 

30 



HINDU WIVES AND WIDOWS 31 

disenchantment of the Orientals in the land of the 
Crescent, their effacement in the Celestial Empire, 
their puerility in the Land of the Rising Sun; 
later, in Oceanica or during long months of ex- 
ploration, I have sailed around islands and archi- 
pelagoes and seen to what a state of inferiority the 
Papua women of New Guinea and the Maori 
women of New Zealand had fallen, those Maoris 
who yet rival our own Tahitian women in charm. 
Well I I must confess that not in the polar regions, 
not in the harems of Algeria, Tunis, Turkey, 
Egypt or Arabia, not in the Far East, not in Aus- 
tralia, nor in Polynesia, not even among the Red- 
skins of America have I witnessed a downfall of 
the feminine sex so irremediable, so heart-rending 
as in the women's quarters among the Brahmans. 

It must not be imagined that I am exaggerating. 
I should not like to seem to be deliberately making 
these brief observations of mine dramatic. The 
condition of the Hindu woman is certainly unfor- 
tunate and deplorable in every way; but we must 
recognize that it tends to improve from day to day 
and to become more supportable, since the liberal 
Administration of the United Kingdom has let fall 
upon the land the manna of its indisputable 
benefits. 

In this connection — since we are speaking of an 



32 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

allied and friendly nation — let us first render full 
and prompt justice to the tales, the lies and the 
slanders which have become the monopoly of a 
certain section of the press and literature, a sec- 
tion mediocre enough in any case. When I first 
set out for India, in 1908, I left, I must confess, 
with an unbelievable prejudice against our neigh- 
bors across the channel. To be frank, I was pre- 
pared to find everything wrong and to criticize 
and denounce, in the great Parisian newspapers, 
reviews and magazines ^ of which I was the corre- 
spondent, the abuses and malpractices of the occu- 
pying race. In my innermost heart there was a 
secret wound to my patriotism, the bitterness of a 
Frenchman against the ravishers of our Indian 
empire of Dupleix, a feeling not unlike what I 
had experienced a short time before on pressing 
the Canadian soil of our heroic Montcalm. 

A first minute and honest inquiry, to the fruits 
of which have since been added other observations 
gathered during the course of my second visit, con- 
verted me to a diametrically opposed opinion ; to 
tell the truth, I have returned thoroughly con- 
vinced of the pacific and humanitarian role of the 
English. These are not vain words, dictated by 

*Ecko de Paris, Revue Hebdomadaire, Illustration, Monde Illustri, 
Femina, etc. 




A BAYADERE DANCE 




SNAKE AND SCORPION CHARMERS 




THRESHING OUT EARTH-NUTS 




GRINDING EARTH-NUTS TO EXTRACT OH. 



I 



HINDU WIVES AND WIDOWS 33 

gratitude or politeness towards the British hosts 
who received me so cordially. I am expressing 
purely and simply nothing but my own thoughts. 
Ever since the English have presided over the des- 
tinies of the Empire, there have been no more of 
those abominable human sacrifices in the pagodas, 
no more of those suttees^ hideous sacrifices of 
widows, no more of those mad orgies of murder, 
torture and debauchery! Less sickness, fewer epi- 
demics, fewer famines, fewer internal wars! It 
is the pax Britannica (which may be compared to 
our own beneficent influence in Morocco), the 
great peace which permits commerce to develop 
and humanity to live better and suffer less. 

Shall I relate some anecdotes on this subject? 
... I remember the charming and chivalrous act 
of an English ofl[icer in garrison at Landi- 
Kotal, on the outposts of Afghanistan. Preceded 
by Lieutenant W.T.F. — of the 57th regiment, 
Wilde's Rifles, I had entered one of the little 
streets of the Afghan quarter. A Moslem woman, 
whose veil was raised to her forehead and allowed 
her gracious face to be seen, had just come out of 
an adjoining shop. The officer noticed it and cried 
out sharply, '^Yoki! Yokir The woman, whose 
attention had been aroused by this cry, instantly 
lowered her veil and passed us by without our 



34 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

being able to see her features, so that neither her 
modesty nor her orthodoxy was in the least dis- 
turbed. I could multiply such occurrences to in- 
finity. It will suffice, for example, to recall the 
respect which the Anglo-Saxons insist shall be 
shown in the temples and pagodas, where the 
foreigner finds himself bound, under severe penal- 
ties, to maintain "the same decent and respectful 
attitude which he would maintain in the interior 
of his own churches" (sic). Moreover, in certain 
sanctuaries, large notices forbid smoking and loud 
talking. The same tact is responsible for the de- 
crees which forbid hunting in several parts of the 
country, which are nevertheless full of game, such 
as Muttra, the sacred land of the beasts, where 
Krishna lived his poetic and amorous idyll, in the 
midst of the human beings of the villages and the 
beasts of the jungle. 

In the matter of education and social uplift, I 
must also mention the admirable initiative of the 
English women and their American sisters who, 
after having studied medicine in Europe, have 
not hesitated to enroll themselves under the banner 
of Lady Dufierin, the wife of the former viceroy 
of India, in order to carry the aid of medicine and 
surgery to the most distant corners of the immense 
Empire. It is well known that the law and the 



HINDU WIVES AND WIDOWS 35 

modesty of the Brahmans forbid the Hindu wo- 
man to receive the help of a male physician. 
England has shown here also, that if she was ca- 
pable of enriching herself from the land of her 
Asiatic vassals, she also understood the duties laid 
on her by her role as a great civilized nation. Let 
us salute her daughters with the same respect that 
we give to our own French women of the Red 
Cross. 

But to return to the condition of the native wo- 
man. Her fate has been determined, from the 
remotest antiquity, by the theocratic code of the 
Brahmans, a sort of religious, civil and moral 
catechism called the Law of Manu. Without 
transcribing the whole of Book V of this social 
monument (although the reading of it would not 
fail to be curious, piquant and at times excessively 
amusing) let us be content with plucking blossoms, 
here and there, from its flower-beds, in order the 
better to appreciate all its exotic perfume. 

To begin with, this first handful: 

"The name of a woman," says the Law of Manu, 
"should be easy to pronounce, sweet, clear and 
agreeable; it should end in long vowels and re- 
semble words of benediction." 

Is not this indeed deliciously poetic, excluding 



36 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

as it does all unfamiliar and inharmonious appel- 
lations? 

Let us pass on to the law of obedience: 

'^A little girl, a young woman, a woman of 
advanced years should never, even in her own 
home, obey her own wishes. A woman must never 
rule herself: in her childhood she obeys her father; 
in her youth her husband; when her husband dies, 
she obeys her sons/' 

(See and compare with this, article 213 of our 
Civil Code: "The husband owes protection to his 
wife, the wife obedience to her husband.") 

The Law of Manu goes further than our Code. 
It regulates the conduct of the wife in her home ; 
and its solicitude, I was about to say its meddling, 
extends to the most intimate details of the hearth, 
the business of the household and even of the 
kitchen : 

"The woman must always be good-tempered and 
must skilfully conduct the affairs of her home. She 
must take great care of the household utensils and 
of the preparation of the food, and know how to 
watch over the well-being of her husband, while 
spending as little as possible/* 

Finally, here is a law which I, for my part, can- 
not help considering Draconian, in spite of my 
belonging to the strong and ugly sex : 



HINDU WIVES AND WIDOWS 37 

"If the conduct of the husband is blameworthy, 
if he gives himself over to other loves and even if 
he is 'without good qualities, the wife must remain 
virtuous and constantly revere him as a god." 

But, we ask, if the woman does not heed this, if 
the wife transgresses the sacred prescriptions of the 
Law of Manu, what will become of her? 

I tremble to write it: 

"The woman unfaithful to her husband is given 
over to ignominy during the whole of Her earthly 
life. After death, she is born again in the belly 
of a jackal, or else she is afflicted with elephantiasis 
or tuberculosis." 

Which is enough to render thoughtful and virtu- 
ous even some of the heroines of Bourget and 
Prevost! 

But let us speak a little of marriage. They 
marry very young in India, almost before they are 
weaned. This is not a jest. Children are be- 
trothed at the breast, and what our young candi- 
dates for the degree of matrimony call by the 
pretty medieval name of "courting" takes place 
here between the rattle and the hoop. These mar- 
riages of children who know each other not at all 
— ^^or very little — are extremely frequent. The real, 
effective marriage naturally does not take place 
until between the ages of twelve and fifteen. But 



38 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

in the meantime there is no possibility of breaking 
the engagement between the fictitious husband and 
wife. So true is this that — terrible as it is to say 
it — if one of the infant couple dies (that is to say, 
the husband) the other is compelled to remain 
single for the rest of life: it is henceforth forbid- 
den to her to think of marriage. This pitiless de- 
cree naturally applies only to the woman, always 
so unjustly treated by the Brahmans. 

The Law of Manu says expressly: 

^^ After having lost her husband, the widow must 
shave her hair and voluntarily let her body grow 
thin, by nourishing herself only on flowers and 
pure fruit; she must never think of marrying 
again, nor even pronounce the name of another 



man." 



More yet! The widows of the rite of Siva are 
allowed to have only one meal a day and never eat 
fish. Let us note in passing that the rite accord- 
ing to Vishnu allows some mitigations of this 
regime of torture. All these reasons and many 
others explain why, to his astonishment, the Euro- 
pean traveler meets so few women in India. 
Some, principally those of the North, never leave 
their harems or zenanas, from which they watch 
the coming and going in the streets from the ter- 
races of their houses, through the open-work 



HINDU WIVES AND WIDOWS 39 

screens of pink pottery or white marble. Others 
go out veiled or in palanquins borne on the arms of 
fierce eunuchs with fiery eyes. It is only in the 
country of the Sikhs, in the Punjab, at Amritsar, 
for example, that one sees long lines of young and 
adorable women moving, with uncovered faces, 
about the Golden Temple or on the porphyry and 
onyx steps of the Lake of Immortality. But these 
are not followers of the formidable Brahmanistic 
faith, they are the poetic disciples of the Book- 
god, the pantheistic and relatively modern religion 
of the Granths, founded by the guru Nanak who, 
in the sixteenth century of our era, was the reform- 
ing Luther of Brahmanism. In southern India, 
on the coast of Coromandel, and in the country of 
Malabar, I also had the pleasure and consolation 
of seeing, at Madras, at Tanjore, at Sri-Ragham, at 
Trichinopoly, at Madura, the women of the people 
belonging to the kindlier rite of Vishnu, moving 
freely about without veils, in the market and pub- 
lic squares, the body gracefully curved, the head 
held high and surmounted by a jar, the gestures 
as graceful as those of Tanagra figurines. 

I have spoken of the women of the people who 
follow the rites of Siva and Vishnu, the two great 
gods of India — for Brahma, the principal creator. 



40 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

is so high that only the priests are allowed to adore 
him ; I shall speak later of the bayadere ; it remains 
for me to say a few words of the sovereign, of her 
who, in the Hindustani tongue, is called ranee or 
maharanee (queen or great queen). 

In the first place, the ranee must be of an old 
and illustrious caste. It is not rare, in India, to 
see a prince, the possessor of an income of thirty 
or forty millions, marry the daughter of a poor, 
ruined Brahman. If the caste is ancient and of 
celebrated origin, it is he who is flattered and en- 
nobled by this marriage, which makes him almost 
the ally and relative of the gods. I am speaking 
here, of course, of the first wife, she who is re- 
garded as legitimate by the people and the sup- 
porters of the crown, and who will be the mother 
of the Crown Prince. Let us not, therefore, call 
her the "favorite," as is done in Turkey or in 
Persia, an epithet applied, on the contrary, to all 
the wives and concubines which later throng the 
polygamous harem of the Indian monarch. Such, 
for example, is the case with the Nizam of Hyde- 
rabad, whose zenana numbers several hundred 
women. 

The ranee does not reign. She must content 
herself with being the effaced wife of the rajah, 
and the mother and teacher of the princes. Never- 



HINDU WIVES AND WIDOWS 41 

thelcss, this rule suffers a few rare exceptions in 
Central India, at Bhopal, for example, where for 
centuries the scepter has fallen on the distaff side 
to the hands of a Begum, a sort of queen of the 
Low Countries, who administers her State without 
the help of her prince consort. A curious offshoot 
of feminism in a soil usually so hostile to it! 

The ranee, who is not at the same time an eman- 
cipated Begum, thus passes her days mournfully 
behind the closed blinds of the women's quarters, 
surrounded by her followers, her dancers and her 
musicians. She leaves as little as possible — far 
less often than her disenchanted Ottoman sisters 
— the golden cage which has been assigned to her 
as a dwelling. And if she is obliged to go out, it 
is always heavily veiled, in a closely screened lan- 
dau, sheltered from the indiscreet glances of the 
crowd and above all from those of impure stran- 
gers. A few liberal rajahs, like the Maharajahs 
of Kapurthala, of Gwalior, of Cooch-Behar, the 
Nawab of Burdwan, the Gaekwar of Baroda, have 
somewhat tempered this rigid regime; they allow 
their ranees to move freely about, with uncovered 
faces, within the enclosure of the palace and the 
royal gardens; at times they even go so far as to 
present them to their European guests, to have 
them sit at their table and to take them with them 



42 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

to Europe, to London and Paris. But these inno- 
vations are not taken in good part by the people 
and the priests. A prince is also blamed by his 
subjects, with more show of reason, when he mar- 
ries a foreigner, even after the first marriage of the 
legitimate ranee. Whatever she may do, the new 
foreign wife or concubine, even if she has become 
a convert to Brahmanism, can never wash away 
the original stain: that of having once eaten oxen 
and cows, sacred animals I An indelible blot that 
will, forever after, involve her in a moral quaran- 
tine, full of secret repugnance and invincible 
suspicion. 

It is impossible to form any idea of the thou- 
sands and thousands of intrigues which are born 
and come to a head every day in the interior of the 
zenana. There dramatic alliances, perfidious be- 
trayals, somber tragedies take place in an atmos- 
phere of perfume and flowers. The wives who 
have been abandoned for some stranger from the 
North or the East form a close league against the 
newcomer, against the intruder, against the pre- 
ferred one. Former enemies are reconciled and 
unite in the common vengeance which does not 
stop at the prospect of horrible reprisals. If the 
plot is discovered, the favorite of the day easily ob- 
tains from her master the death of the guilty person 



HINDU WIVES AND WIDOWS 43 

or persons, by the cord, the dagger or the brew of 
hemp, three instruments of murder that never 
spare. But if the plot succeeds . . . then woe to 
the stranger! She must remain on her guard day 
and night, and never accept a drink, a gift, a 
sweetmeat, not even a flower from her rivals. 
Quick and subtle poison lies in wait for her every 
instant. Princesses have been known to be sud- 
denly stung by a scorpion or a tarantula, bitten by 
a cobra or a coral snake or, more often, to struggle 
in the convulsions of a frightful agony, their intes- 
tines perforated here and there by the muslachcs 
of a tiger, treacherously introduced into packets of 
drugs. I could give names and dates; but I owe 
discretion to the magnificent hosts who received 
me so warmly. Therefore, I shall not betray the 
word I gave to those who themselves made me such 
terrible confidences. 

To sum up, in whatever sphere, the fate of the 
Hindu woman, plebeian or patrician, is worthy of 
exciting our deepest compassion. And if the danc- 
ing girl, as we shall see later on, escapes this unfor- 
tunate law, it is, alas! only at the expense of her 
morals. 



PART II 



CHAPTER V 




THERE ARE RAJAHS AND RAJAHS 

A rival of the "Nabob" — As In the days of the fairies — ^An 
Indian fire-eater — Innovating rajahs — The story of a dis- 
grace — ^Tlie Mohour — ^A judgment of God. 

OR as many as sixteen years, Paris 
has possessed no longer its Nabob — 
his sun set with my illustrious and 
regretted father-in-law, Alphonsc 
Daudet — but its Rajah, or, more 
exactly, its Maharajah. 
Which of us has not met in the fashionable 
world, in the saddling-room at Auteuil, at a first 
night in the Theatre Frangais, on varnishing-day 
at our Salons (where the late Chartran depicted 
him in 1906), a certain bronze-complexioned 
prince, with a black pointed beard, smiling with 
all his dazzling white teeth, who, almost every 
year, from May to October, leaves his kingdom in 
India to come and bathe in our atmosphere of art 
and elegance, as in a life-giving bath of light and 
gaiety? 

47 



48 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

His Highness Jagatjit Singh, Maharajah of 
Kapurthala, one of the ruling princes of the Pun- 
jab, is virtually one of us at all the receptions, all 
the gymkhanas, all the Persian balls. One finds 
him now at Dampierre, with the Luynes, now at 
Chaumont, with the Broglies. And there the Ma- 
harajah forgets that he has the power of life and 
death over his subjects, in his Sikh kingdom of 
Kapurthala, as well as in his two provinces in 
Oudh: Baondi and Bharaich. Who can boast of 
being more French in taste and tendencies than 
this Asiatic potentate, who speaks our language so 
purely, from whom the treasures of our art and 
literature hold no more secrets, who numbers his 
best friends in the French book of heraldry, who 
has had his sons brought up at the College des 
Cleres, in Normandy, near Rouen, and even car- 
ries his love of our ways so far as to have his cooks 
and his chauffeurs taught at Paris? 

But one link was lacking from this chain. And 
back again in his capital the Maharajah dreamed 
once more, dreamed always and in spite of every- 
thing of Paris, of France. . . . He dreamed of it 
with melancholy, in one of his many Indian or 
Moorish palaces of Kapurthala, on the terrace of 
his enchanting villa, Buona-Vista, or again in that 
curious Renaissance chateau of Mussoorie which 




H. H. PRINCESS BRINDAHMATI OF JUBBAL, WHO BY HER MARRIAGE 
BECAME CROWN-PRINCESS OF KAPURTHALA 



THERE ARE RAJAHS AND RAJAHS 49 

he had built, like an eagle's nest, in the Himalaya, 
at an altitude of 2,300 meters. Suddenly, as hap- 
pens in fairy tales, the magician extends his wand: 
"I wish," he saySj^"the mirage of Paris!" 

A few lakhs of rupees tinkle. . . . And an im- 
mense, colossal palace, of a style exclusively 
French, surrounded everywhere by French gar- 
dens, lawns, vases, statues and gushing fountains, 
rose from the ancient and astonished soil of the 
Sikhs. It was at this time, being invited with the 
most gracious insistence to be present at "the hang- 
ing of the crane" in this French palace, that I first 
went to India. 

Speaking of this prince, an amusing anecdote 
occurs to me which shows all the caustic wit of 
which, on occasion, he is capable. 

Some years ago, during the early days of his life 
in Paris, the Maharajah went one evening to the 
Trone fair, accompanied by some friends who had 
a taste for outlandish and unusual enjoyments. In 
a booth, an imitation Indian was devouring impar- 
tially fire, glass and serpents. 

"Who would like to talk Indian with the fire- 
eater?" shouted his Barnum, in a sonorous voice, 
through a megaphone. 

"I," answered the Maharajah. 

Smilingly, he approached the platform and in 



50 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

his sweetest voice, revealing his dazzling Asiatic 
teeth, the prince asked several questions in Hindu- 
stani of the eater of fire, glass and serpents, who of 
course remained tongue-tied. It was in vain that 
His Highness next tried all the dialects in use in 
the peninsula: Sikh, Urdu, Sanscrit, Nepalese, 
Bengali, Tamil, Malabar. . . . The mountebank, 
bearded with wax and ocher, did not answer, and 
with good cause. 

The manager, very much annoyed at this little 
scene, then intervened, saying to the royal ques- 
tioner: "Look here, excuse me, but when will you 
stop splitting our heads with all this gibberish of 
yours? It's no use! Come, we can easily see you 
are no Indian." 

The prince protested, very much amused. 

"Well, if you are an Indian," went on the dis- 
player of savages, "go ahead and eat a little glass 
and fire ; they all eat them out there." 

"That's right!" cried the people, interested in 
what was happening; "let him eat some fire!" 

Then, still smiling, the Maharajah said simply, 
tapping the hollow of his stomach : "Impossible, I 
am on a diet!" 

And he went off. 

Rara avis, you will say. . . . 

No indeed! Other potentates of India have fol- 



THERE ARE RAJAHS AND RAJAHS 51 

lowed this example, among them the Maharajah 
of Gwalior, the Aga-Khan, the Gaekwar of 
Baroda, the Jam of Nawanagar, the cricket cham- 
pion, the Nawab of Burdwan, arbiter elegantia- 
rum: Europe — London or Paris — has conquered 
them. They no longer fear openly to display their 
modern tendencies. The Maharajah of Gwalior, 
for example, has actually renounced polygamy; it 
is said that at the death of his mother (the dowager 
queen), his only wife, the present Maharanee, 
with whom he is very much in love, will give up 
the veil and show her face uncovered, as the Ma- 
haranee of Cooch-Behar and her daughters al- 
ready do at Calcutta. As for the Gaekwar of Ba- 
roda, he has revolutionized his country and even 
the imperial English government by his subversive 
and extreme social projects. Imagine it! He has 
carried the paradox so far as to found schools for 
girls! 

But by the side of these enlightened minds, with 
liberal ideas, how many reactionaries there are, 
how many backward men who are not yet free 
from the oppressive guardianship of the Brah- 
mans, who are forbidden by their orthodox faith 
to come in contact with the impure feringhis, 
eaters of cows! ... Of what use would it be to 
give their names? It is better to let them fall into 



52 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

oblivion, those whose fanaticism separates them 
forever from our civilization and our Occidental 
way of thinking. 

What strange court customs surround these 
jewel-laden princes! Powerful in their immense 
wealth and in their omnipotence in the heart of 
their own kingdoms — at least in everything that 
does not concern the army and the finances of the 
country — the Indian monarchs surround them- 
selves with a veritable horde of ministers and 
courtiers. The official etiquette is excessively 
rigorous and the strict observance of these rules 
sometimes gives rise to the severest consequences. 
One incident will show this. At the court of a 
prince of my acquaintance, I was present, one day, 
at the annual feudal presentation of the Mohour, 
synonymous with the oath of fealty of our Middle 
Ages. The ceremony consists in summoning each 
vassal, who defiles, in hierarchical order, before 
the king clothed in his full military costume. 
Each one bows down as he pronounces an official 
phrase, then he touches the sovereign's hand with 
a silver rupee, which he afterwards drops into a 
silver plate. This lasts for three long hours and 
at the end of ten minutes becomes exasperatingly 
monotonous. One of the chamberlains, a sort of 



THERE ARE RAJAHS AND RAJAHS 53 

Under-Secretary of State, I imagine, who had been 
a favorite until this day, was passing before the 
throne. Unfortunately, as he went by, I do not 
know how it happened, but his foot caught in the 
fold of a rug; he stumbled and the piece of tribute 
fell before it had touched the king's hand. Then I 
saw the latter throw a hard, implacable look at 
the courtier, who reddened, stammered an excuse, 
and withdrew, quite out of countenance. It ap- 
peared that by not letting the symbolic rupee touch 
his sovereign, the vassal had proved as plain as 
day his flagrant bad faith toward his lord and 
master. Tradition demands, in the case of such a 
"Judgment of God," that he be immediately 
stripped of his functions and fall into disgrace. 

Very autocratic in regard to their immediate 
circle of favorites and courtiers — I am speaking, 
naturally, of the reactionaries — these sovereigns 
have the power of life and death over their wives 
and children, and even over all the servants in the 
palace and the women's quarters. In certain Cen- 
tral States the English, who are always very re- 
spectful of the vested power of their proteges 
within their own domains, have recognized that 
princes of the reigning dynasties have the right of 
life and death over all their subjects. And the 



54 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

good pleasure of the king can have the chamber- 
lain or the minister whom he merely suspects 
crushed under the foot of the executioner-elephant. 

Suspicion. . . . 

The hidden disease that devours them I 



CHAPTER VI 




AN ASIATIC MAECENAS 

En route for the Punjab — "Kartarpour, Kartarpour!" — The 
arrival at the court of H. H. Jagatjit Singh, Maharajah of 
Kapurthala — ^A royal interview — Palace and gardens a la 
franqaise — In imitation of the great Choiseul. 

AM thinking of all these things in 
the express which carries me for 
the first time toward Kapurthala, 
to my friend the Maharajah, a very 
modern prince, who gives us in 
France the example of the complet- 
est assimilation of European ideas, but who, once 
he has returned, guards no less completely — and 
jealously — the customs, habits and traditions of his 
people and his country. 

Ah I how rapidly they fly past the windows of 
the compartments, the stations that I must dash 
through in two days if I am to be present over 
there at the festival of the inauguration of the 
French palace, and at the Durbar, the anniversary 
of His Highness. Here is Baroda, the capital of 

55 



56 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

the Gaekwar of the same name. Here is Ahmeda- 
bad, the ancient city of the sultans of Guzerat, of 
which Sir Thomas Roe said in 1616 that it was "a 
city as large as London." . . . Here is Mount 
Abou, with its lacework temples, at the entrance 
of the wild desert of Rajputana. . . . Here is 
Ajmeere, here is Jeypore the Marvelous, here is 
Delhi, which for centuries was the capital of Asia. 
All these names, shouted in Hindustani by the 
railway guards, call up hours of splendor and con- 
quest. What does it matter if today nothing is left 
but the dust and ashes of far-off history? These 
are among the things that endure and are never 
forgotten. 

The interminable, arid and monotonous Rajput 
desert has disappeared. And with it those bands 
of monkeys that clung so amusingly to the tele- 
graph poles, those slow caravans of dromedaries 
bearing southward the precious essences of the 
North. The soil now shows itself productive; it 
is the Punjab, the country of the Sikhs, yielding 
rich harvests of sugar-cane, cereals and cotton. 
We should like to open our eyes and keep them 
constantly open, to rivet them in some way on the 
fertile and sometimes flowering plains, but night 
has come, and with it the great daily care of in- 



AN ASIATIC MMCENAS 57 

stalling the bedding on the uncomfortable and 
dusty bench. 

"Kartarpourl Kartarpour!" That is the name 
which, the next morning, announces the end of the 
long and fatiguing journey. On the station plat- 
form — a real little country station — one of His 
Highness's stewards, all covered with silver braid, 
his sword at his side, installs us, my companions 
and me, in a vast limousine, which rolls off with 
irreproachable smoothness, while our baggage is 
confided to graceful little trotting mules. 

A few miles ... a tornado of dust behind us. 
. . . Then tufts of eucalyptus, aloes, cacti, orange- 
trees, to which cling the vines of the bougainvil- 
liers. . . . Next a very wide, straight avenue; we 
pass through the ceremonial gates of the park, 
made of wrought iron with excellent taste in the 
style of Lorraine. . . . The auto makes a skilful 
curve before the perron of an immense palace, in 
the modern French style, adorned with bas-reliefs, 
groups and statues — a second edition of our Grand 
Palais des Champs-Elysees, surrounded by French 
gardens in an almost identical setting. 

The guard, assembled under arms, reminds us 
of where we are. The lancers who throng the 
perron — giants over six feet tall, with beards and 



58 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

upstanding mustaches — salute us with their 
lances. And toward us advances, with his hand 
outstretched, a smile on his lips, the Dewan, the 
prime minister. Colonel Massey, ex-Regent of the 
States of Kapurthala, the friend of the Maharajah, 
to whom, as well as to several Indian officers of the 
General Staff, he taught English and French. 

"Yes," says the sovereign, who receives me in a 
great Louis XVI salon, furnished by Arbusson 
and decorated with mythological panels, "I 
wanted to realize here one of the dreams of my 
life, to leave behind me a work that would endure. 
You know how devoted I am to French art in all 
its forms. To me, French art stands for delicacy, 
elegance and above all for harmony. There is 
nothing disproportioned in it. Everything hangs 
together. Look at a portrait by Nattier, a bust by 
Houdon, or a fagade by Mansart. That will ex- 
plain to you why, in 1900, when I was anxious to 
build in my capital a palace in European style, I 
did not hesitate to give the preference to your art 
and your artists. The plans for my palace were, 
in fact, drawn up by two of your countrymen, 
MM. Alexandre Marcel and Paul Boyer." 

"Just when did Your Highness give orders to 
begin the foundations?" 

"In 1902. The work was carried forward with 



AN ASIATIC MAECENAS 59 

all speed between 1903 and 1908, under the watch- 
ful direction of one of the best architects of Bom- 
bay, Mr. H. J. A. Bowden. As you have been 
able to judge for yourself, MM. Alexandre Mar- 
cel and Paul Boyer have placed on the exterior 
of the buildings a real stamp of grandeur and 
majesty. As for the interior arrangement of the 
rooms, everything pure and gracious offered by 
your art is synthesized in a skilful gradation of 
every epoch, from the dining-room and the Dur- 
bar, my reception-room, to the salons in the styles 
of Louis XIII, Louis XV, and Louis XVI, up to 
the Empire cabinet. But what can I say of the 
details! And the sculptures, the bas-reliefs, car- 
ried out so personally by Desbois and Tessierl 
All these things are the work of your artists. All 
the credit belongs to them. I have done nothing 
but open the door of the storehouse." 

The Maharajah becomes animated. He speaks 
in a fresh, cordial voice, behind which no reserva- 
tion of false modesty is concealed. But what this 
Maecenas does not mention is the price it has cost 
him to "open the storehouse" — six millions; nor 
does he speak of the minute collector's solicitude 
with which he has himself presided over the buy- 
ing and arrangement of the furniture, the rugs, the 
paintings, the china and the ornaments, which, one 



6o MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

and all, are placed in a setting suitable to their 
style. 

A question rises to my lips: "And the French 
gardens which I noticed just now? Your High- 
ness does not speak of them." 

"Ah! yes! the French gardens! I have been 
especially anxious to have them. They are rather 
shocking over here, where we do nothing but step 
from the impenetrable jungle into the winding 
paths of an English garden. Frankly, how could 
I have done otherwise? And besides, for a lover 
of Versailles — and I am devoted to it — what could 
be more suggestive than these straight avenues, 
symmetrical, cut at right angles? Then, too, what 
could be more poetic than these thickets, full of 
shadow and mystery, where one might read a poem 
by Henri de Regnier, or an archaic pastiche of 
Francois de Nion? In the same classical spirit 
— and in order not to run counter to the geometri- 
cal idea of Le Notre — I have had them place be- 
fore the principal fagade the basin of a fountain, 
adorned with allegorical statues which recall the 
myths dear to the heart of the Roy-Soleil. In this 
way, I shall have, even in India, the illusion both 
of Versailles and Paris. A French park, and the 
'cousin' of your Grand Palais des Champs- 
Elysees. What better could I ask?" 



AN ASIATIC MAECENAS 6i 

And a§ I make my way back to my flowery bun- 
galow, where the jays are whistling, the nightin- 
gales singing and the emerald paroquets chatter- 
ing, the memory comes to me of that other Ms- 
cenas, a great French seigneur of the eighteenth 
century who, having fallen in love with Chinese 
art, also had his way. 

His name was Etienne-Frangois, Duke de 
Choiseul, the disgraced minister of Louis XV. 

And in his love for the Celestial Empire he had 
built, near Amboise, the pagoda of Chanteloup. 



CHAPTER VII 



AN INDIAN DURBAR 




What is meant by a Durbar — A princely anniversary horoscope 
— ^The "repurchase" of power — The review of the Sepoys 
— ^A typically Indian menu — The dance of the bayaderes — 
Why the bayadere is so much revered. 

N Indian Durbar is much more than 
a fete, it is much more, even, than 
a gala celebration. To tell the 
truth, the Hindustani word remains 
untranslatable, as untranslatable as 
the esotericism of the Brahmans 
and the Buddhist bonzes often is. 

The Durbar partakes at once of the nature of a 
military function, a religious function, and a social 
function. The people are admitted only to the two 
first and for them it is an occasion for great rejoic- 
ing: dances, dramatic spectacles and above all 
feasts, all "at the expense of the princess," when 
the ruler is a Begum, as at Bhopal, or "at the ex- 
pense of the prince" when the dispenser of this 

bounty is a Mussulman Nabob, like the Nizam of 

62 



AN INDIAN DURBAR 63 

Hyderabad, or a Hindu Maharajah, like H. H. 
Jagatjit Singh, at Kapurthala. When these fes- 
tivities overflow national boundaries, w^hen they 
pass beyond the frontiers of the independent States, 
w^hen they become imperial — that is to say Eng- 
lish — the expenditure reaches an exorbitant figure 
and becomes the occasion for ruinous prodigalities. 
Witness the grand Durbar at Delhi, in 1903, which 
cost the Anglo-Indian government the sum of 200,- 
000 pounds sterling and in connection with which 
the viceroy, Lord Curzon, who saw to many things 
himself, spent out of his own purse the pretty 
little sum of 15,000 pounds. As we can see, the 
India of today has not fallen behind yesterday; it 
still remains the land, uniquely perhaps, of splen- 
dor, lavish and dazzling splendor. Was not this 
shown, for that matter, in a magical way at the 
time of the coronation of H. M. George V? 

People cry up the hospitality of the Scotch, 
which has become proverbial. I have never put 
it to the test; but I tasted several years ago, long 
before the war, the charm of the Hungarian hos- 
pitality of a great magnate of the Crown of Saint 
Stephen, my dear and regretted Count Eugene 
Zichy, a true friend of France, and a great noble 
as well, in the full meaning of the term, since he 
was the chamberlain of the late ex-Emperor Fran- 



64 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

cis Joseph (which did not prevent me from being 
also received at the court of H. M. King Peter at 
Belgrade). Well! I am obliged to confess that 
the hospitality of a rajah far surpasses even that of 
the noblest and most fortunate of Magyars. But 
it is not my intention to relate here, one by one, the 
receptions, attentions, and surprises which the 
master of an Indian household can shower on his 
guests. Therefore I shall pass over in silence the 
dinners, balls, and soirees, the excursions on horse- 
back, by auto, by coach, by yacht, the hunts on 
elephant-back,^ the visits to palaces, temples, treas- 
uries, the crematory, etc., which belong to the 
province of a private journal. 

But the official Durbar! That marvel of the 
eyes! That dazzling exhibition of jewels! That 
extraordinary gathering of princes, courtiers, 
priests, and soldiers! That is what seems to me 
interesting to relate here, while I strive to banish 
all hyperbole from a style that involuntarily — 
perhaps contagiously? — becomes filled with pomp. 

The religious festival. . . . 

It is symbolic and unforgettable. 

It is in a white patio of the old palace, under a 
dais of dark blue and white — the Kapurthalian 

* See in my romance "Parvati," the description of a tiger-hunt, with 
the Maharajah of Jeypore. 




THE GATEWAY TO THE PALACE OF KAPURIUALA 




A BRAH MANIC RELIGIOU.S VVEUUING 



AN INDIAN DURBAR 65 

colors. The priests are seated, after the Oriental 
fashion, on a thick Persian rug. There are about 
twenty of them, including the High Priest and 
the astrologer, who will soon read aloud the San- 
skrit horoscope of His Highness. Grave and im- 
movable, they keep their eyes fastened upon the 
altar, which is composed of a mosaic in tiny dots 
of white, red and blue, of the same design as the 
pavement of the patio, and figuring in its squares 
of equal size flowers, triangles, rosettes, ovals and 
the sacred lotus. ... A stir among the crowd of 
privileged persons admitted below the dais — the 
women may not witness the ceremony except from 
high, half-open windows — a stir which increases 
and announces the approaching arrival of the 
sovereign. . . . Then a herald, followed by mace- 
bearers and guards announces: "His Highness, the 
Maharajah!" 

He is seated now, the prince, the Prince Charm- 
ing, whom all our high society is eager for. He is 
seated facing the High Priest, on a sofa of blue 
velvet, with golden braid. Three of his sons sur- 
round him: at his right the Princes Mahijit and 
Amarjit, already as serious as men; at the left, the 
young Prince Karamjit, with an eager, spiritual 
face — three students of the College of Normandy, 
at Cleres. The Crown Prince Paranjit is now in 



66 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

England, where he is finishing his studies before 
his marriage, which will take place in two years. 
But the ceremony is beginning. While a serv- 
ant, armed with a white horse-hair fly-chaser, 
busily waves this new sort of fan, the priests bring 
up by turns, for the Maharajah to touch, bread, 
rice, sweetmeats, roses, as a sign of submission. 
Chanting begins ; it is the priest's young assistants 
who are celebrating in Sanskrit the praises of their 
prince in an at first monotonous, minor strain, 
which grows faster until it soon turns into a vol- 
uble recitation of litanies. They distribute grains 
of rice among us so that, according to the ancient 
custom, we may throw them upon our amiable and 
hospitable host. The hail of rice falls abundantly 
upon the shoulders of His Highness, the symbol of 
our gratitude and respect! . . . Follows a long 
discourse by the High Priest and the performance 
of several rites, in which rice, flowers and salt play 
an important role, as well as a woolen cord of 
mingled strands of red, yellow and white, the signs 
of honesty, faithfulness and courage, which in the 
olden days the warriors never failed to fasten as 
scarfs across their breasts. Now the astrologer is 
drawing the horoscope of the sovereign, reading a 
long rigmarole, of which I can grasp only the 
beautiful characters written in red and black ink 



AN INDIAN DURBAR 67 

on an interminable parchment adorned with 
cabalistic figures and signs. 

Oh, the curious, the piquant allegorical custom 
which follows this tiresome listening! The Maha- 
rajah rises, followed by his suite, and seats himself 
in one of the scales of a wooden balance, which 
stands in one of the corners of the patio. On the 
other are black, white, green, yellow, red and gray 
sacks — containing respectively gold, silver, rice, 
grain, perfumes and fruit — which equal the 
monarch in weight. The symbolic weighing is 
carefully gone through seven times — seven, always 
seven, the fatal number which appears every- 
where! — then the scale is emptied and the sacks are 
given to the poor. The king has ransomed himself 
in the eyes of his subjects. They bring up a horse, 
then a cow, both covered with scarlet saddle- 
cloths, decorated with green and gold. They are 
the presents of His Highness to the poorest among 
the priests. The privileged Brahman, whose turn 
it is now to bestow princely alms, leaves the group 
of his fellow priests, half prostrates himself before 
his benefactor, and goes out, leading the animals 
himself. The ceremonies, prayers, and chants are 
ended. AH the ministers, chamberlains, courtiers, 
aides-de-camp and stewards of his civil household 
rush confusedly towards the Maharajah and bow 



68 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

low before him, while they offer him a piece of 
money, which the sovereign merely touches. It is 
the Mohour again, the symbol of submission and 
feudal tribute. 

The native music, rendered by flutes, clarinets, 
shrill fifes and tom-toms, bursts into a particularly 
pleasing harmony, adorned with a succession of 
fifths and reversed ninths, which would enchant 
Stravinsky, and cause the shades of Bazin, Gevaert 
and Fetis to tremble with indignation. Outside 
the cannon thunders. And also we hear faintly the 
blasts of the military trumpets. The crowd of 
guests files slowly out. As I am crossing the 
threshold, a priest presents me with a sacred cake, 
rolled up in a dry leaf, while another Brahman 
dips his thumb into a sort of yellow pomade, with 
a basis of saffron, and places it at the top of my 
nose, between the eyes, according to the rite of 
Siva. Then I notice that all my companions wear 
the same sign. During the whole day we must 
preserve this tattooing, which brings us from the 
Hindus many sympathetic smiles. 

The military festival. . . . 

A resplendent procession of uniforms in the dust 
of the military parade grounds, under a blazing 
sun, in the midst of the immense gathering of 



AN INDIAN DURBAR 69 

people who have come from all the little towns in 
the neighborhood of the capital. 

A great uproar rises from the crowd, anxiously 
bending forward to admire the fine carriage of the 
infantrymen, the martial spirit of the cavalry and 
the sang-froid of the cannoneers, grouped about 
their guns, which are fastened to zebus. The ap- 
pearance of this Sikh army in its dark uniforms is 
really superb, this army whose loyalty served the 
English cause so faithfully in 1857, at the time of 
the Sepoy rebellion, in 1873 at the time of the ex- 
pedition into Afghanistan, and finally from 1914- 
191 8 on the European, Asiatic and African fields 
of battle during the World War. 

It files past, brave, well-disciplined, its music 
at its head, a music of bugles, Scotch bagpipes and 
tambourines, before its chief, the Maharajah, 
dressed very simply, without any decorations, in 
a black dolman with a velvet collar, mounted on a 
light bay Burmese horse, surrounded by his aides- 
de-camp and the officers of his General Staff. The 
artillery divides into three portions its regulation 
salute of twenty-one cannon shots. The crackling 
of rifles splits the air: it is the infantrymen who are 
discharging their guns with joyous ''hurrahs!" in 
honor of His Highness. 



70 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

The social festival. . . . 

It follows the feudal ceremony in the Palace of 
Justice where, in the throne-room, the civil and 
military functionaries solemnly renew their protes- 
tations of fealty and devotion while, in the Great 
Square, the royal elephants, caparisoned with rich 
howdahs covered with saddle-cloths, embroidered 
with gold and precious stones, majestically sway 
their trunks and their tusks encircled by three 
golden rings. 

I hasten to add that it is an Oriental social fete. 
A delicate attention of the Maharajah has ordered 
all his court, all his guests — except, of course, his 
European guests, in their somber and banal black 
— to wear the national costume for great occasions : 
a turban set with rubies, emeralds and pearls, 
tunics and dalmatics of satin, velvet and iridescent 
brocades, incomparably embroidered. There is an 
Indian dinner: burning curries, ragouts of young 
partridges, bustards, and kids, ices of curdled milk, 
sprinkled over with pistachio nuts, betel leaves and 
small black seeds, of a spicy, somewhat camphor- 
ous flavor, the whole seasoned with popular music 
of the most fascinating effect. 

And then the dancing girls. The Maharajah 
has had them brought expressly from Agra. Their 
orchestra of viols and tom-toms accompanies them 



AN INDIAN DURBAR 71 

faintly. They dance, they sing. Their guttural 
voices cry out the lament and the suffering of love, 
and the contortions of their hands reveal the sharp 
pain of self-abandonment. For, if one may say 
so, they never move. It is a mute and half-immo- 
bile choreography, but how gripping and how 
expressive, when a sudden flame lights up the 
enigmatic shadows of their dark eyes! 

And I think of the strange destiny of these 
Asiatic ballerinas, with their eyelids smeared with 
kohl, who come before me, their heads covered 
with pearls and their bare feet with rings, so dif- 
ferent from the dancing girls celebrated by our 
poets, from those who delighted us in Lakme, The 
King of Lahore, The Grand Mogul. With them 
all was convention. These, on the contrary, spring 
both by birth and their artistic profession from the 
hieratical dancer, and by their habits and their 
private lives from the professional prostitute. 
They are both religious and symbolic. They in- 
carnate in song and dance the fabulous personages 
of the old myths of the primitive theogony. They 
are adored and petted by the people and the Brah- 
mans and also by the rajahs because they are por- 
trayers, in speech and action, of the great national 
epics, the ancient dramas of the Sanskrit and Aryan 
mythology. Superior by far to the indolent and 



72 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

lascivious odalisque of the Levant, they are equally 
superior to the Nipponese Geishas, with their 
laughing eyes and little mincing gestures. 

That bayadere there! Just watch her; she 
knows how to be by turns amorous, unhappy, ironi- 
cal and terrible. Her chanting voice, accompanied 
by the faint tambourines and the diverse vinas, 
dear to the soufis — "dying viols" that gentle 
dreamer Mallarme would have called them — a 
psalmody now high, now low, full of mysterious, 
disturbing and far-away melodies. Singling out 
one of the spectators, she undulates before him, 
fascinates him, and envelops him with her veiled 
song, with her almost motionless posturing. Pres- 
ently, without any transition, she upbraids him, she 
curses him and then implores him, adjures him, 
with the desperate wringing of her hands and 
wrists, with the sobs of a stifled voice. It is beauti- 
ful and it is human, because she vibrates, laughs 
and weeps. Those powerful thinkers, the Hindus, 
have realized that this sort of woman, the national 
and religious aede, ought to be protected, free, 
emancipated and venerated. 

Now I understand why the great potentates 
themselves bow down before this power, why they 
pay in gold — as much as three or four thousand 



'AN INDIAN DURBAR 73 

francs for an evening — for the stirring pantomime 
of these courtesan dancers. . . . 

It is because they seem to be what they are in 
reality, the superhuman invokers of love and 
death. 



CHAPTER VIII 

BETROTHAL UNDER THE LAW OF MANU 

Two years later — Nostalgia for India — I find in the heart of 
the Punjab the "upper crust" of the Faubourg — The ex- 
position of gifts — ^An invisible bride — In which the Law 
of Manu shows itself less and less . . . gallant ! 



iTJ 



WO years have gone by. 

And now, once more India, which 
I have already surveyed once, from 
North to South and East to West, 
calls me. . . . Irresistibly! 

How can I escape from this fas- 
cination? Rereading my notes, one idle evening, 
I have felt my soul filled with vague longings. Oh ! 
to see again that country, those landscapes, those 
colors, that harmonious light which magnifies and 
defies the dullest gray! And then my book to be 
completed; so many gaps to be filled in, so many 
investigations to be continued, so many documents 
to be examined, verified, fathomed. 

Come, the die is cast, Kapurthala shall see me 

74 



UNDER THE LAW OF MANU 75 

again; once more I shall taste the exquisite hos- 
pitality of its Parisian rajah. 

A rajah who is indeed Parisian, for who can 
boast of being more so than this Amphitrion whom 
no nuance of our language or thought escapes, 
who has carried his love of France so far as for 
six years to confide his future daughter-in-law and 
Crown Princess to the care of such French friends 
as the Princess Amedee de Broglie, the Countess 
Rostaing de Pracomtal, the Dowager Princess de 
la Tour d'Auvergne, the Countess Gaston de Mon- 
tesquiou-Fezensac, the Countess du Bourg de 
Bozas and many others of the great ones of our 
aristocracy, women with a full sense of their duty 
as well as elegant and envied women of the world? 

It is not astonishing, therefore, that a sovereign 
so modern and so much in love with our taste and 
our art should wish all his French friends to be 
present at the celebration of the marriage of his 
eldest son, the Tikka-Sahib, Paranjit Singh, who 
has just returned from London, and the very young 
and charming Princess Brindahmati of Jubbal, 
whose ancestors, of an illustrious Rajput caste, lost 
in the darkness of ages, go back, they say, to the 
sun as their progenitor. 

Indeed, they have all come, these French 
friends, breaking their usual home-keeping habits, 



^6 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

leaving Paris, Egypt, the Cote d'Azur, to cross 
oceans and the tropics. Let us give their names 
without exception, for they are examples of quick 
decision and the love of adventure: Prince An- 
toine of Orleans and Braganza, Prince and Prin- 
cess Amedee de Broglie, Prince Albert de Brog- 
lie, the Marquis and Marquise de Pothuau, Gen- 
eral Baron de Sancy, Comtesse de Pracomtal, 
Marquis Pierre de Jaucourt, Baron Alexandre de 
Neufville, Comtes Charles and Jean de Polignac, 
Mme. Vlasto, Vicomte de Jumilhac, M. Andre 
de Fouquieres, Comte and Comtesse de la Met- 
trie, Vicomte Jean de Brecey, Comtesse and Mile, 
de Failly, M. Rene des Cheises, Comte Alphonse 
de Fleurieu, Vicomte de Geofifre de Chabrignac, 
M. Georges Brocheton, Vicomte Gontran de Bar- 
bentane, Comte de Charnieres, M. and Mme. 
Alexandre Marcel, Comte de Buyer-Chaillot, M. 
Andres Lataillade, Vicomte de la Motte, M. 
Zafiri, M. Saures. On the English side, I remem- 
ber the names of Generals Drummond and Powell, 
Lady Sassoon, Colonel and Miss Shackleton, the 
Governor of the Punjab, the Hon. W. Sykes, etc. 
. . . Finally, on the Hindu and Mussulman side, 
let us name H. H. the Maharajah of Jammu and 
Kashmir, who has come with an escort of officers, 
chamberlains, a hundred servants, followed by his 



UNDER THE LAW OF MANU 77 

favorite elephants, his horses, his camels, and his 
coaches; H. H. the Maharajah of Jhalawar, with 
his fabulous jewels — diamonds, emeralds, rubies — 
accompanied by his uncle, Bal-Bahr Singh; Their 
Highnesses the Rajahs of Poonch, Djagraon, Nar- 
pur, with glittering aigrettes and their motley 
suites of officials and retainers; H. H.. the Aga- 
Khan, the first Nabob of India, the highest Mus- 
sulman personage of Asia, the direct descendant 
of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet — a Parisian 
also, at this time thirty-three years of age, any- 
thing but a fanatic, who adores France and the 
French; other princes whose names and places of 
origin I do not know but who are there among us 
and offer, beside our persons, villainously dressed 
in European style, the regrettable contrast of silk 
with wool. 

A great Hindu marriage is no ordinary event. 
It is an occasion for dazzling fetes, unprecedented 
festivities, wild prodigalities and Rabelaisian 
feasts. It is the correct thing to ruin, or almost 
ruin, oneself. The "Paraitre" of my intelligent 
and penetrating cousin, Maurice Donnay, finds 
here its completest and most exact application. 
One must spend, one must even squander; tomor- 
row will do for serious business and domestic 
economy! This does not extend to the guests 



78 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

themselves who only watch what is going on and 
merely add their friendly or sumptuous contribu- 
tions to the mad luxury that obtains among the 
wedding gifts. 

They do not consist, these wedding gifts, as they 
do with us, of modest cases of jewels, silver, lace, 
furs, pianos, automobiles, etc. . . . The Hindu 
wedding boasts of more royal presents. Would 
you care to know, for example, what was the wed- 
ding gift of His Highness the Maharajah of Kash- 
mir to the young couple of Kapurthala? An ele- 
phant, six horses, fifteen thousand rupees. The 
other princes, less rich than he, contented them- 
selves with offering the betrothed: one, three 
camels, two horses, a dozen falcons; another, some 
Bokhara rugs, a collar of pearls, draperies em- 
broidered with gold; others made their appear- 
ance preceded by a herald bearing sacks of pre- 
cious stones in their matrix, or rough-hewn nug- 
gets of gold. The exhibition of the gifts takes 
place, as in France, a few days before the marriage 
ceremony, but in the morning, from ten o'clock 
till noon, in a special room, guarded by two armed 
attendants. The groom, who alone is visible be- 
fore the day of the marriage — the young girl being 
strictly secluded in the zenana of the ranees — does 
the honors generally of the inspection of the gifts, 



UNDER THE LAW OF MANU 79 

many of which are reserved for him personally: 
arms, jewels, saddles, tennis rackets, polo sticks, 
etc. 

There is something melancholy and saddening 
in the persistent and mysterious absence of the 
bride, who ought to be the queen, feted, petted, 
complimented, of all these festivities. But the 
Hindu wedding custom permits no relaxation of 
this stringent system. Even if, like the Princess 
Brinda of Jubbal, the bride were strongly imbued 
with European civilization, this preventive seques- 
tration would none the less take place. It is, in a 
sense, a preparatory novenna which she accom- 
plishes now. Surrounded by the dowager queen, 
that is to say by the maharanee, the other ranees 
and their intimates, she trains herself and accus- 
toms herself in advance to the double role of sove- 
reign and wife which must soon be hers. The 
priests visit her and instruct her thoroughly in her 
duties — there is no question of her rights, which 
do not exist — and in certain obligations which the 
Law of Manu imposes on her. 

This Law of Manu, of which I have already 
spoken but to which I must return, enacts, in re- 
gard to marriage, certain engaging, curious and 
yet poetic rules which, however, when taken to- 
gether, reveal to us in what a condition of depend- 



8o MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

ence, of absolute servitude, even if mingled with 
respect, the Hindu wife has to be held. Finally, 
there are certain deliciously naive counsels it gives, 
this Law of Manu, to those who are possessed by 
the legitimate desire to contract upright marriages. 
I cannot resist the amusement of quoting a few of 
them: 

"Let him who wishes to marry not espouse a 
girl having red hair, or one limb too many (?), 
or who is often ill, or who is insupportable by 
virtue of her loquacity. But let him take a well- 
formed woman, who has the graceful gait of a 
swan or a young elephant (!) and whose hair is 
fine, her teeth small, her limbs of a pleasurable 
softness." 

The legislator seems to have, perhaps from ex- 
perience, an opinion of conjugal fidelity that is 
rather bitter and tarnished with skepticism: 

"Even when shut in their apartments, under 
the guard of faithful and devoted men, women 
are by no means in surety; those only are so who 
guard themselves from their own will. Because 
of their passion for men, the inconstancy of their 
temper, and the lack of affection which is natural 
to them, it is in vain, here below, to guard them 
with vigilance; they will always be exposed to 
infidelity to their husbands." 



UNDER THE LAW OF MANU 8i 

"It is true that Manu has apportioned to women 
the love of pleasure and dress, concupiscence, 
anger, evil ways, the desire to do ill and per- 
versity." 

In what gallant terms these things are said! In 
the same way, the "Law for Men", according to 
Hervieu, is not embarrassed, in India, by all the 
hypocritical prolegomena of our Occidental di- 
vorces and separations. Has a woman ceased to 
please her husband? The latter does not need 
to have recourse to an extra-judicial examination 
or the proceedings of an attorney. A thorough 
repudiation, made before the Brahman, takes the 
place of the official proceedings of non-reconcilia- 
tion, constituting ipso facto the divorce. As for 
the pretext for invoking it, on the part of the hus- 
band, the very eclectic Law of Manu furnishes 
him with a veritable assortment: he has only to 
choose among them according to his good pleas- 
ure, merely taking account of the circumstances 
of time and place. 

"A sterile woman," declares the Law of Manu, 
"may be replaced at the end of eight years; one 
whose children are all dead, in the tenth year; 
one who has brought into the world only daugh- 
ters (a stigma of inferiority) in the eleventh year; 
one who speaks sharply, at once. 



82 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

^'During one whole year, let a husband endure 
the aversion of his wife. But after one year, if 
she continues to hate him, let him take what prop- 
erty belongs to her, leaving her sufficient to sub- 
sist and clothe herself, and let him cease to live 
with her." 

All these arrangements, all these paragraphs — 
of which I quote only the principal, the most sa- 
lient ones — constitute the written law of marriage, 
the law applied to the letter, without restriction; 
no tempering of mildness or gentleness has en- 
croached upon this assemblage of pitiless and 
meddling rules. The woman, on the day of her 
marriage, must walk, not beside her husband, but 
behind him, like a slave. It would be unseemly 
for her to be larger than her husband or for her 
head to be taller than his, the symbol of a future 
emancipation that would not be tolerated. Thus 
the ''fashion" is for small brides, with smoothly 
combed hair held apart with fillets and naked feet 
— perish our Louis XIV heels! — such that the 
smallest husband will not be thrown into the shade. 
In Southern India — the coasts of Coromandel and 
Malabar — the wife is obliged, as a sign of submis- 
sion, to place her foot over the real or imaginary 
print of each of her husband's footsteps; it would 



UNDER THE LAW OF MANU 83 

be an excuse for the rupture of the marriage if 
this rule were not observed. 

Such are the auspices under which the woman 
falls into the power of her husband. I have not 
deliberately blackened a picture already somber; 
but it is incontestable — and I believe uncontested 
— that of all married women, even the ''disen- 
chanted" Mohammedans, the Hindu is the most 
wretched and degraded. One of my friends, a 
Brahman of an ancient caste, who speaks and 
understands our language like a Loti or an Ana- 
tole France, has tried to explain to me, with the 
aid of an ingenious paradox, the reasons for this 
discreditable treatment of beings who are, in gen- 
eral, beautiful, gentle and virtuous. In his opin- 
ion, the Hindu wife is shut up and kept under 
this iron discipline through a spirit of respect on 
the part of the men, and notably of those who 
drew up the law concerning their way of life. 
The law-giver had considered — and with him all 
the Brahmans, the masters, the later initiates of 
the esoteric doctrine — that woman, because of the 
beauty and grandeur of her function, should be in 
some manner isolated, shut up, cloistered in a 
tower of ivory. Her mission, to procreate and 
raise up future generations, placed her above all 
contact and all profane contamination. Let us 



84 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

admit the sophistry. It is in order to be highly 
esteemed, then, too sacrosanct, that the unfortunate 
woman today submits to be no longer human and 
to lead in the obscure emptiness of the zenana the 
stupidest and most degrading of existences. 

Many maharajahs, refined, converted and mod- 
ernized by our European customs, by their jour- 
neys to London or Paris as well as by their early 
instruction and their reading, have had the courage 
to affirm themselves reformers. Unfortunately, 
the movement as a whole has been only on the 
surface; the evolution will be slow. There are 
still so many of these princes who are barbarous, 
backward, retrograde, orthodox Hindus and se- 
cretly haters of everything foreign! Therefore 
one must admire without reserve those who, in 
spite of the obstruction of their priests or their 
ministers, strive to raise the condition of women 
in their States. That there exist, as in Baroda, 
schools for girls, or that they give their Crown 
Princess, as in Kapurthala, six years of instruc- 
tion in Europe — the impulse remains beautiful 
and appears significant. One must not wish things 
to go too quickly in India. The ages have created 
feminine servitude; it cannot be abolished in a 
couple of years. 

Evolution is not revolution. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE SIKH SEHRABANDI 

Like father, like son — The Sehra, or taking of the masculine 
veil — An orgy of silk, velvet and gems — The Maharajah 
of Kashmir encircles with his hands the forehead of the 
groom — ^Again the Mohour! 




ET us take as an example of what I 
have just written the marriage of 
the Crown Prince (in Hindustani, 
Tikka-Sahib) of the Sikh State of 
Kapurthala, in the Punjab. I have 
already said that this prince — ^who 
is infinitely gracious and sympathetic — had, with 
his three brothers Mahijit, Amarjit and Karamjit, 
been brought up in France and England. I will 
add that he knows our language and speaks it flu- 
ently, that the college of Normandy, at Cleres, and 
the Lycee Janson at Sailly, have taught him to 
know and love the great names of our literary his- 
tory, while his eye grew familiar with their busts, 
ranged along the fagade of this latter institution 
of learning. It may be said of him that he is al- 

85 



86 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

most a European, and very much attached by his 
tastes, his natural inclinations, and his earliest edu- 
cation to this modern life, the advantages and 
charms of which have been revealed to him by 
his father. 

Nevertheless, in spite of this undeniably Occi- 
dental education, H. H. Paranjit Singh was 
obliged to marry in the Hindu fashion the fiancee 
he had chosen freely, by whose side he had played 
and grown up in Europe, who was his childhood's 
friend in London and Paris. The same rites and 
the same ceremonial, the same sequestration of the 
bride during the days preceding her wedding, the 
same observance of the horoscopes and the same 
childishly symbolical, coarse and at times repul- 
sive practices. But let us not anticipate; before 
giving as detailed an account as possible of the 
Hindu ceremony, let me say a word of the curious 
betrothal custom, in which the groom alone takes 
part, which bears the name of the Sehrabandi. 

The Sehrabandi consists, properly speaking, of 
a taking of the veil on the part of the groom. It 
is an actual taking of the veil which, among the 
higher castes, is transformed into the placing on 
the groom's head of a golden fillet, from which 
hang many strings of pearls. This temporary con- 
jugal head-dress is called the Sehrah. The honor 



THE SIKH SEHRABANDI 87 

of placing it on the head of the future husband 
belongs to the noblest among the guests. At Ka- 
purthala, it was the Maharajah of Kashmir who, 
with his own hands, encircled the forehead of the 
Tikka and showed him in this way the high esteem 
and consideration in which he held him. 

The people are out, massed in dense crowds 
about the palace where the priests, the ministers 
of the court and the guests await the arrival of 
the procession. On the square rises the noble and 
proud esquestrian statue of the Maharajah Rand- 
hir Singh Bahadur, the grandfather of the present 
sovereign, which is surrounded by the thirty-two 
royal elephants, covered with their vivid saddle- 
cloths, decorated with gold braid, silver bells and 
precious stones. It has been no easy matter to 
range in line these colossal animals in the midst 
of the dense crowds, but the Mahouts (elephant 
drivers) are no novices, and they excel in directing 
the formidable pachyderms, without troubling 
either about the small boys, who dart under their 
feet, or the horses, most of which rear up in terror. 
Opposite the statue, an interminable cordon of 
troops spreads out its dark blue line, flanked on 
right and left by the Sikh lancers and the cavalry 
of the guard. The cannon thunder in the distance. 
Then His Highness' band strikes up the Kapur- 



88 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

thalian national air, a sort of religious hymn, very- 
simple, very short and rather melancholy. 

And now there is the procession of uniforms, 
of marvelous costumes studded with diamonds and 
— let us not forget them also — elegant Parisian 
toilets. All this heterogeneous fashion of Europe 
and Asia is swallowed up under the portal, in the 
train of the maharajahs and princes. Each one 
takes his place among the seats reserved in the 
galleries or below the dais in the immense throne- 
room. The ceremony opens with a long address 
by the priests ; then there are addresses of welcome 
pronounced by the Dewan (the prime minister) 
and by an important municipal delegation pre- 
sided over by the Sahib Devindar Dass, the mayor 
of the capital. The first of the bayaderes, a star 
from Calcutta, who has been brought at a great 
price, and whose head is weighted down with 
pearls and rubies, then advances, her palms up, 
her head slightly bent, in an almost hieratic atti- 
tude. She recites, sings, dances and gives in panto- 
mime a compliment suitable to the occasion; her 
voice, slightly nasal and monotonous, predicts an 
era of joy, of long life and prosperity for the young 
couple (observe that the bride is still absent). A 
small, unobtrusive orchestra of subdued viols and 
tom-toms beats time to her slow and undulating 



THE SIKH SEHRABANDI 89 

dancing and follows her, step by step, but always 
at a respectful distance. 

The dancing girl has finished her chant in its 
minor key — a chant which, to tell the truth, re- 
sembles a funeral dirge more than a song of hap- 
piness — and she slowly makes her way out, by one 
of the lower exits of the room, still accompanied 
by her musicians, and very conscious of the "favor" 
she has been willing to do the assembly in holding 
them under the charm of her art. 

Then the Maharajah of Kashmir arises from his 
throne, takes the Sehrah from a little box offered 
him by an attendant and fastens it about the fore- 
head of the young prince who, with a smile of 
assent, lends himself, with the best grace in the 
world, to this strange and most symbolic perform- 
ance. Is he not quite familiar with the meaning 
of this allegory? He knows that this veil of pearls 
— which falls over his face, obscures his sight, and 
sometimes strikes the nose, the chin, the lips — is 
the sign of his betrothal with the fiancee whom 
no one sees and represents the interdiction which 
henceforth lies upon him to cast his eyes on any 
other woman than her whom he has chosen. I 
like the symbol. . . . 

But look now, servants in the livery of the mon- 
arch bring to the feet of the Tikka several sacks 



90 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

which give out a silvery sound. It is the Mohour, 
the feudal homage of the municipalities of which 
I have already spoken. At this signal, a crowd 
of courtiers and notables rise and then come back, 
their hands loaded with presents, ornaments, 
jewels, garments, stuffs, arms, trappings, etc., 
which they place, with a reverence, in the hands 
of two royal ushers. These offerings constitute, 
on the part of the donors, a gage of vassalage and 
fealty to their future sovereign. As we see, the 
Sehrabandi of a prince is not only the presentation 
of the groom to the nation, it is also an official 
recognition of his eventual succession to the throne. 

Their Highnesses rise. The music again strikes 
up the national hymn. The betrothal ceremony 
is ended. 

Motor cars, coaches, gala vehicles carry us 
across the city, decked with Kapurthalian flags and 
the Franco-British standards, to the pretty little 
tents of our European encampment. 



CHAPTER X 




THE WEDDING AT KAPURTHALA 

Festivals and banquets — I win the elephant race — The French 
toast of our host — A madigral to the ladies of the French 
aristocracy — A broken glass a good omen — The Brahmanic 
ceremony and the Sikh rites — A procession from the Thou- 
sand and One Nights. 

S was suitable for a reigning prince, 
the Maharajah had been deter- 
mined to have everything well done, 
not so much from the desire to daz- 
zle his guests as from the purely 
friendly anxiety to assure them as 
much comfort as possible in their "camping out." 
To this end, he had long in advance divided up 
and parceled out a large section of his park into 
even blocks, cut by central avenues and adjoining 
streets. Vast tents, about a hundred of them, had 
been specially set up as apartments, carpeted and 
decorated, with brick chimneys and electric lights, 
each consisting of three rooms and a bath. Each 
one of these tents, moreover, waited on by three 

91 



92 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

servants and an orderly, bore a number and the 
printed name of its single occupant. A curious 
and picturesque spectacle, indeed, that of these 
three encampments (Hindu, Mussulman, Euro- 
pean), offering to the eye, from the high terraces 
of the French Palace, the suggestion of a new 
town risen from the earth like the cities of Alaska 
and stretching, all white, from the sunrise to the 
sunset. 

From daybreak on, during these four days of 
enjoyment and in spite of the sharp cold which 
benumbed the fingers and covered the grass with 
white frost, cavaliers and amazons — Comte and 
Comtesse de la Mettrie, Vicomte Jean de Brecey, 
Comte Charles de Polignac, Vicomte de Geofifre 
de Chabrignac — had their mounts pawing the 
ground before their tents and set off gaily, intrep- 
idly, "a la frangaise" to explore the surroundings 
of the capital, plain or jungle, shady lanes or bare 
paths, or to breathe the regenerating air of the 
morning. Others gave themselves up to photog- 
raphy, to sports which make the soul freer and the 
body more joyful, tennis, pigeon-shooting, bad- 
minton, etc. Each day, I should say each hour, 
brought a new distraction, a fresh attraction, an 
unexpected surprise. 

Shall I speak of the interest which from the 



THE WEDDING AT KAPURTHALA 93 

very first day I felt in the Hindu gymkhana? 
Feats of fakirs, fantastic performances by acrobats 
who walked on a tight-rope, carrying two donkeys 
tied together over their shoulders; fights between 
rams, which dashed their horned foreheads and 
their resounding skulls together like catapults, 
fights between cocks and quails, which ruffled up 
their crests and feathers, while they picked out 
with ferocious eye the spot in which they should 
strike the adversary a mortal blow; leaps of ath- 
letes to the back of one or several elephants; comic 
pantomimes or fantastic mock battles. And the 
military garden-party, on the last day! The ex- 
ercises by turbaned gymnasts of divers colors, 
whose twistings and intercrossings made me think 
of the linear designs executed by the sokols of 
Prague, the charge of the lancers, the camel races, 
the elephant races — in which I had the honor, or 
the good luck, to be more exact, to come out first, 
distancing by the length of an elephant my friend 
Albert de Broglie, second, and Andre de Fou- 
quieres, third. 

I should seem thankless if I passed over in si- 
lence the automobile excursions, the hunts with 
falcon and greyhound, the princely display of 
fireworks (which lasted three-quarters of an hour 
and included several set pieces), the illuminations, 



94 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

the dances of the bayaderes, a European ball fol- 
lowed by a cotillion led by our countryman Fou- 
quieres and Mile. Arlette de Failly; finally the 
delicious and Gargantuan banquet of three hun- 
dred covers, served in the hall of the Durbar, in 
the course of which the Maharajah, after an im- 
pressive speech in English, pronounced in our 
language, and without the least accent, the delicate 
toast which follows: 

"Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not wish to miss 
the opportunity of telling you of the great pleas- 
ure it gives me today to receive my good friends 
from France, who have taken the trouble to come 
so far, especially in order to be present at the mar- 
riage of my son. I have endeavored to assure them 
a hospitality as comfortable as possible, and I hope 
they may carry away from their sojourn in my 
States a pleasant and lasting memory. 

"You all know what a profound friendship I 
feel for your beautiful country, for its glories, its 
artists, its scholars, for everything that constitutes 
the patrimony and the genius of your race. Varied 
and somewhat complex sentiments, but which give 
a fairly exact idea of the pleasure I feel each time 
I return to Paris and have the agreeable opportu- 
nity of meeting you there again. 

"I am particularly sensible of the coming among 



THE WEDDING AT KAPURTHALA 95 

us of His Royal and Imperial Highness, Prince 
Antoine of Orleans and Braganza, whose two 
brothers, the Princes Pierre and Louis, have al- 
ready been my guests, a few years ago. Equally, 
I salute the presence at Kapurthala of Prince and 
Princess Amedee de Broglie, who also visited me 
twelve years ago, and who have this time given 
me the pleasure of bringing with them their son, 
Prince Albert. I am infinitely touched by the 
friendship which Princess Amedee de Broglie 
never ceases to show me, and also by the kindly 
interest she bears for my daughter-in-law, to whom 
she has been to this day the wise counselor and 
truest friend. I can promise that the young bride 
will never forget all the attention with which she 
has been showered in France, and especially by 
the Princess de Broglie, at the Chateau de Chau- 
mont as well as in Paris. 

"There is another friend of the Crown Princess 
whom I am anxious to thank quite particularly 
this evening; that is the Countess Rostaing de 
Pracomtal, who has been for my daughter-in-law 
a second mother as well as an admirable instructor. 
Better than anyone else, this great lady of your 
aristocracy has been able to inculcate in the young 
bride the precious elements of this modern Euro- 



96 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

pean education, of which I wished the wife of my 
son to enjoy the experience. 

"The benefits of this innovation belong to the 
future. So far as concerns myself, I have no reason 
for lack of confidence in this new method — with- 
out doubt, more of the world, more refined than 
ours — and I foresee, for our Indian daughters, a 
pure and definite alliance of the grace of the Occi- 
dent with the modesty of the Orient!" 

Is it necessary to add that this charming little 
discourse, spoken all in one breath, as it were, and 
without the least hesitation, aroused from the 
thirty or more French guests a veritable tumult 
of applause? Thereupon Prince Amedee de 
Broglie, whom death has since taken from my 
deferential sympathy, arose and, in a few well- 
chosen words, expressed to the monarch the senti- 
ments of lively gratitude and respectful friendship 
of all his compatriots. Then Andre de Fouquieres, 
in a warm and charming impromptu, constituted 
himself the bearer of the good wishes, to the young 
couple, of all the youth of France. "It is," he said 
in closing, "the custom to see an omen of happiness 
in the breaking of a glass on the wedding-day. 
Under these circumstances, I do not hesitate to 
break mine in honor of the bride and groom!" 
And the crystal, thrown violently against the floor, 




THE "announcer" OF A WEDDING 




THE AUTHOR ON HIS HUNTING ELEPHANT 





L^fll^HB 




MM 




MP 














^#^'. 


1 


|ig^ 


Mi 


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■to 





ELEPHANTS IN THE FLESH AND ELEPHANTS OF STONE 




THE GREAT TEMPLE OF ANGKOR-VAT 



THE WEDDING AT KAPURTHALA 97 

shattered into fragments, amid the applause of the 
assembled company. 

Today is the Great Day! 

At seven in the morning, the European, Mus- 
sulman and Hindu encampments are awakened 
by the sound of deafening trumpets. The crowd 
crushes about the approaches to the palace and 
the steps of the temples in order to catch a momen- 
tary glimpse, as it passes, of the glittering proces- 
sion of Asiatic kings and noble European guests. 
The women themselves seem to have departed, 
for once, from their native reserve: one sees them 
sitting, only half veiled — some of them have even 
dared to lift entirely their scarves of white or yel- 
low muslin — on the terraces of the low houses that 
have been carefully chalked in honor of the occa- 
sion. The tradesmen have decorated their shops, 
small boys are chasing one another and throwing 
flowers under the eyes of the light-hearted police- 
men who are smiling at them with a half-grave, 
half-paternal air. 

We have already taken our places in the court 
of the old palace, Jalaokhana, in the shade of an 
awning which faces the nuptial canopy of green 
velvet with golden fringes, beneath which the 
Brahmans will soon unite the young couple. Just 
opposite to us an awning striped with dark blue 



98 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

and white (Kapurthalian colors) shelters the 
ministers, chamberlains, courtiers, officers and 
notables. Finally, before the altars of the priests, 
rises a second canopy, hung with marvelous stuffs, 
below which are placed thrones of gold and silver. 
It is here that the Maharajah and the princes are 
to sit, clad in their dalmatics embroidered in gold 
and encrusted with precious stones. 

A flourish of trumpets bursts forth. . . . The 
cannon thunder. . . . Here come the official per- 
sonages, one by one, in automobiles, in their 
coaches or on the howdahs or umbabaris of their 
elephants with the tinkling bells. . . . There is a 
pause. . . . Then, while the orchestra of the 
guard, brilliantly directed by Mr. Marshall, 
breaks into Mendelssohn's Wedding March, 
then into the March of Glory, composed for the 
occasion by your servant (a musician in his spare 
hours), a curtain rises at the back of the patio, 
where are concealed, behind grass screens, all the 
princesses of the zenana. 

And now the bride appears, her face uncovered. 

She advances slowly, a little grave, but radiant 
with beauty, grace and elegance. A long sari of 
old rose, almost salmon, silk drapes her body, as 
slim and supple as a vine of the jungle. A veil of 
the same color, slightly lowered on her forehead. 



THE WEDDING AT KAPURTHALA 99 

leaves a glimpse of the dark hair, parted and held 
with a fillet, after the Indian fashion. A heavy 
collar of splendid pearls, as large as nuts, encircles 
her neck, of a dull w^hite in which can be clearly- 
seen the ascendancy of the Aryan race. She reaches 
the nuptial dais and seats herself by the side of the 
Crown Prince, who is also in a superb costume 
of old rose silk, his head adorned with a white and 
gold turban, from which the Sehrah hangs down 
and in the center of which sparkles a flaming 
aigrette. 

The Brahmanic ceremony begins, long, silent, 
slightly monotonous, curious, nevertheless, in its 
symbolic and evocative rites: the interlacing of 
flowers and grains of rice that form arabesques; 
the reading of horoscopes; recitations of Sanskrit 
prayers; the deciphering of ancient scrolls by hol- 
low-voiced priests. The bridal couple are seated 
on rich, soft cushions; near them crouches their 
best man, the youngest of the four brothers. Prince 
Karamjit Singh, who plays the silent role of boy 
of honor, inseparable from the bride and groom. 

Next follows the Sikh marriage, under another 
awning. Two priests, with venerable snow-white 
beards, read in muffled voices liturgical anthems 
drawn from the sacred book, the Granth. Others 
distribute allegorical flowers and rice, while seven 



loo MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

virgins, dressed in yellow, chant the responses in 
unison, accompanying themselves on a little port- 
able harmonium, of which they themselves man- 
age the bellows. Then the bride and groom rise, 
break the sacred cake, exchange the morsels and 
come and place themselves under the royal canopy, 
by the side of their parents and the crowned heads 
of the company. 

The wedding ceremony is ended. The guests 
file past, quite as they do with us, in the narrow 
sacristies of our churches — and offer the young 
couple their congratulations and wishes for their 
happiness. Far of¥ the artillery thunders, the 
troops present arms, the people deliriously acclaim 
their future sovereigns, the elephants wave their 
trunks and tinkle their little silver bells. . . . 

There it is, the shining vision of the Orient of 
the past, of the days when the great Mogul em- 
perors, Akbar, Shah-Jahan, Aurengzed, dazzled 
with their magnificence a conquered and prostrate 
India! 



PART in 



CHAPTER XI 




TOWARDS THE AFGHAN FRONTIER 

The attraction of the risk — ^Amritsar, its golden temple and its 
Lake of Immortality — Poor Lahore! — Peshawar and its 
interminable caravans — A raid on an unsubmissive coun- 
try — Who goes ? You cannot pass — ^A moment of anguish. 

HAVE said good-by to Kapur- 
thala, to its Parisian artist-prince, 
its polished, gracious court, its bril- 
liance and its splendors, and set 
out for northern India, which is so 
harsh, arid and aggressive. 
My taste for adventure draws me irresistibly 
toward these wild and at times inaccessible regions 
of Pamir and Indo-Kooch, where the Pathans, the 
Afridis and the Afghans reign as masters, sowing 
death, ruin and terror about them. Louis Rous- 
selet, who lived for five years in India, from 1863- 
1868, has written in his India of the Rajahs: "The 
next day I was at Peshawar, and thence I was able 
to look out over that terrible Afghan frontier 

which no one can approach without rushing to a 

103 



104 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

certain death. I should have greatly liked to pro- 
long my excursion as far as the famous Khaibar 
Pass where, in 1843, ^^ English army of 10,000 
men was completely wiped out by the Afghans. 
But I was told it would be impossible, as a few 
days before an English officer had been murdered 
not far from there." It must be admitted that 
things have greatly improved since 1868 and that 
it is practicable, today, to go as far as that famous 
Khyber Pass, misspelled by Rousselet, without 
running the danger of certain death. Three times 
a week the caravans, coming from Kabjul to 
Lahore, file from sunrise to sunset through this 
pass, which is guarded by armed battalions of 
Sepoys spread out along the road and a few bat- 
teries of artillery installed on the heights. So 
far as my knowledge goes, travelers and tourists 
jvho have not lingered in the pass after sunset have 
never run any risk. The Afridi bandits seem to 
have tacitly admitted this truce which has been 
imposed on them by force of arms and no longer 
trouble in these days the innumerable caravans 
that wind along over the historic and strategic road 
from India into Central Asia. 

What is more difficult and dangerous is to reach 
this impenetrable and almost inviolate Afghan 



TOWARDS THE AFGHAN FRONTIER 105 

frontier. But I shall have occasion to speak of 
this later in some detail. 

On leaving Kapurthala, my first halt is Amritsar 
— an obligatory halt, an intensely interesting visit. 
Amritsar is not only one of the great cities of the 
Punjab, it is also, it is above all, the religious cap- 
ital, the place of pilgrimage of the Sikhs. This 
sacred metropolis contains a marvel which the 
most blase eyes cannot contemplate without a pro- 
found artistic emotion; I am speaking of the 
Temple of Gold and the Lake of Immortality. 
Imagine a great quadrangular basin, four acres 
or so in size, in the center of which rises, on an 
islet joined to the mainland by a marble jetty, a 
square building of delicate workmanship, the 
foundation of which is of marble and all the rest — 
the first floor and the roof — of pure and unalloyed 
gold. This roof alone is a gem of the goldsmith's 
work, with its dome and its four little Moorish 
towers. All along the fairy-like jetty are strung 
lanterns, half of marble, half of gold, which are 
illuminated at nightfall. There are no other 
guardians to protect these riches from theft or 
spoliation than a few old, turbaned fellows who 
are without arms. One would say that a sort of 
sacred terror protects this temple against any pro- 
fane or sacrilegious violation. This is because in 



io6 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

the interior of the edifice lies the much venerated 
and dreaded Adi-Granth, the Koran of the Sikh 
guru, Nanak, who received the divine inspiration 
in the sixteenth century of our era. Priests vv^ith 
gray and white beards are seated about the Book, 
which is veiled by muslin worked with gold; 
young officiating priests drone through their noses 
anthems in the minor key, and crowding pilgrims 
pass and repass and prostrate themselves before 
this Hindu Decalogue on which they fling grains 
of rice and loose petals. 

Strange and poetic, this abstract, philosophical, 
symbolical religion which in so striking a manner 
resembles that of Islam. 

From Amritsar I have gone on to Lahore. What 
a disillusion, this Lahore! ... Is it because the 
euphony of the name, its association with Mas- 
senet's opera, and the romance of departed splen- 
dor which still clings to it make the imaginative 
Frenchman delude himself far in advance with 
chimeras, so that the reality at once appears to 
him very flat, very banal and quite insignificant? 
But this Lahore of tin and plaster produced in me 
as in all who visit it the same impression of dis- 
appointment and regret. This Rattan-Chands 
Temple, this Wazir Khan's Mosque, these tombs 
of Ranjit Singh's and Jehangir, this Golden 



TOWARDS THE AFGHAN FRONTIER 107 

Mosque give the effect of a vulgarized reproduc- 
tion, a sort of chromo of the magnificent examples 
of architecture and sculpture I have already seen. 
With the exception of the fountains of Shalimar, 
closely recalling those of Versailles and Saint- 
Cloud, which are surrounded by gardens and rec- 
tilinear perspectives that one would swear had 
been laid out by Le Notre — Lahore quite frankly 
does not deserve the honor of a visit, certainly not 
of a prolonged stay. I am broken-hearted to have 
to destroy an illusion which has been dear to many 
of my readers. 

Through my car windows, I can see one desolate 
landscape follow another, in this cold, repellent, 
desert-like India. Here the ground is full of 
crevasses. There are no more of those beautiful 
valleys of the Punjab, no more of those clumps 
of trees beneath the shade of which the shepherd 
used to lead his flocks at noon. How strongly we 
feel the keen North wind, that harsh wind which 
comes from the high plateaus of Asia! . . . In the 
distance, the first spurs of the massive mountains 
of Pamir and of Indo-Kooch rise up in sharp 
silhouettes. 

The next day I awake in a city that is no longer 
Indian — Peshawar — and which, because of its 
proximity to Afghanistan, wears an almost Persian 



io8 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

air. Everything here is Mussulman. The inhabi- 
tants, as one sees them in the streets, have their 
beards reddened with henna; they have shaven 
skulls, noses like eagle beaks, shifty, blinking eyes. 
Their turbans, flattened like pancakes, give them 
the surly air of mountain brigands, in the style of 
Edmond About. There are very few women, but 
on the other hand a great many children, some of 
them perched on buffaloes or donkeys, others be- 
tween the camels' humps, those grave and peaceful 
camels which encumber the streets while they 
ruminate philosophically on the emptiness of all 
earthly destinies. 

The principal attraction of Peshawar, I will 
even say the only attraction of this frontier town 
of 90,000 inhabitants, in which are mingled all the 
northern races of the peninsula, Afghans, Pathans, 
Afridis, Baluchis, Kashmirians and Persians, is the 
excursion to the famous Khyber Pass, that strategic 
defile through which the Russians might formerly 
have invaded India. Today, because of the 
Anglo-Russian political alliance, this eventuality 
is fortunately no longer to be feared. I say "for- 
tunately" since because of it I was able to go as 
far as the advance posts of the Indo-Afghan hinter- 
land, and therefore, it was thanks to the Triple 



TOWARDS THE AFGHAN FRONTIER 109 

Entente that I was able to set foot, somewhat illic- 
itly, on forbidden territory. 

In the early morning I am awakened by the 
Lieutenant-Colonel from Kergariou (with whom 
I have had the pleasure of traversing this region 
on the way from Kapurthala) . He is as stiff with 
cold as I am, after a night passed in shivering in 
his uncomfortable and icy room. The govern- 
ment of Peshawar has very graciously given us all 
the necessary permits, and even authorized us to 
attach ourselves to a mission sent by the General 
Staff to carry instructions to the distant outposts 
of Landi-Kotal. An open automobile carries us 
rapidly across the town and its suburbs, then along 
the white, dusty road. Our companions are ami- 
able English officers, distinctly gentlemen ; I notice 
that they all carry revolvers in their belts, and 
that the chauffeur and the two Sepoys who escort 
us, squatting on the running boards, are armed 
with rifles and have their belts full of cartridges. 
Hum! Hum! This has quite an air of war, or in 
any case of an armed expedition into a rebellious 
and inhospitable country, infested with Afridi 
bandits, robbers, cutthroats, torturers, who are 
only held in check by the fear of the guns of the 
forts. Moreover, our expedition — the governor 
has urged this on us — must take place only between 



no MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

sunrise and sunset; otherwise the adventure is at 
our own risk and peril. 

The narrow gorge which we have now entered 
is austere and grandiose as a landscape of Dante. 
There is no verdure, no grassy slope, no bush or 
shrub, nothing but stone and sand. Above our 
heads the caravan route unrolls in a long network. 
It is an interminable procession of camels, buf- 
faloes and mules which, by the thousand, trans- 
port from Peshawar to Kabjul, or vice versa, the 
goods that are exchanged between these two great 
Asiatic markets. One might think it was a Bibli- 
cal exodus, a flight of the Hebrews after one of 
those plagues of which the Scripture speaks. A 
unique spectacle, such as I have seen nowhere, 
even in China and Mongolia! This narrow rib- 
bon of beasts of burden, stretching over several 
miles of roadway, absolutely disconcerts the imag- 
ination; it remains with me even more as a geo- 
graphical than as a pictorial vision. 

The gorge continues; in spite of myself it re- 
minds me of the Pass of the Axe where Flaubert 
imprisoned his mercenaries alive. We, too (if 
these bands of robbers were organized, centralized 
and commanded by a daring emir), we should 
never be able to escape alive from this pass. The 
sting of possible danger thrills our amour-propre 



TOWARDS THE AFGHAN FRONTIER iii 

deliciously. But suddenly the ravine broadens 
out, we leave behind Ali-Mosjid, a little mosque 
w^hich seems to bar the way. The last Sepoy out- 
posts salute us. Beyond is th,e beginning of the 
forbidden territory, the Indo-Afghan hinterland 
of which I have spoken. Henceforth we have no 
one to depend upon but ourselves, our little escort 
and a few miles away the batteries of heavy artil- 
lery of the English post of Landi-Kotal. What 
a terrible desert now opens before our eyes! A 
flat uniformity, yellow and sandy, sprinkled here 
and there with granite boulders. On the road — 
can one call this a road! — we no longer pass a 
single living thing, man or beast. In the distance, 
a massive mountain range cuts against the indigo 
of the sky; then white patches that grow clearer; 
then a collection of tumuli which are nothing else 
than the first Afghan houses of beaten earth, at the 
frontier post where India definitely ceases. 

In the afternoon, after the excellent lunch which 
is offered us by the British officers in their com- 
fortable block-house, we visit the little village, its 
markets, its mosques and its tombs. Very strange, 
these tombs, earthen mounds, hillocks surmounted 
by staves from which banners float, and they make 
one realize that Central Asia is only a league 
away. An examination of the shops reveals 



112 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

nothing European; one finds there only goods for 
barter, articles of immediate utility, no knick- 
knacks, no vanities. The tourist — let us rather say 
the traveler — so rarely, so exceptionally ventures 
into these regions! Before us, as we look down 
from the citadel, the great valley that leads to 
Kabul extends indefinitely, flanked by the chains 
of Pamir and the Indo-Kooch, the foothills of 
which sink away at our very feet. A few hundred 
meters from us is the frontier of Afghanistan. We 
see it w4th our eyes quite clearly, not marked as 
in Europe or by a painted or emblazoned post, but 
simply indicated by a cabin of refuge, a sort of 
sentry-box of flat bricks, commanding the strategic 
route. All the caravans which we have just en- 
countered, those innumerable strings of camels, 
buffaloes, and mules, that tattered Biblical exodus, 
all have had to defile under the pitiless eye of the 
khan and his soldiers. The papers are minutely 
verified and stamped; no fraud is possible as re- 
gards the identity of the caravaners, who must all 
prove their nationality as Afghans. The Euro- 
pean, no matter how profound his knowledge of 
their language and customs, would never pass the 
scrutinizing glances of these customs men di primo 
c art ell 0. 

I question the officers ; I am seized with a some- 




THE ROCK AND THE PLAIN OF GVVALIOR 




THE TERRACES AT FUTTEHPORE SIKRI, NEAR AGRA 



TOWARDS THE AFGHAN FRONTIER 113 

what childish curiosity to approach these sentries. 
Can I do it without risk? Major S — smiles, shakes 
his head and politely advises me not to do any- 
thing. It does not do to trifle with these rude 
mountaineers who do not understand pleasantries. 
They might misinterpret my intention, imagining 
that I wished to violate their territory; a pistol 
shot is a matter of a moment. Very well, I shall 
be wise. And besides, I may well consider myself 
as highly privileged to have been able to approach 
so closely the forbidden region. There are not 
many others who can boast of that. 

Our mission is at an end ; our English guides 
and we ourselves quickly make our farewells to 
the little garrison of Landi-Kotal. We must hurry, 
for the sun has begun to sink towards the horizon; 
it would not be good to have a breakdown in the 
midst of the hinterland, or even at the beginning 
of the Khyber Pass. Let us be ofif, then! Our 
automobile starts, flies down the slopes, fords the 
torrents at the risk of stalling the motor. . . . 
What does it matter? We must be out of this at 
all costs before night falls. We cross on our return 
journey the interminable ribbon of caravans en- 
countered on the way out. Then we reach the be- 
ginning of the defile. At a sharp turning, great 
fragments of rock roll over our road and come 



114 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

near to upsetting us and pulverizing us. I raise 
my head and perceive in an open space above us, 
on a ridge, turbaned and grimacing faces, trying 
to conceal themselves. At a gesture of the officer 
w^ho commands us, one of the Sepoys makes a 
movement as if to put his rifle to his shoulder. 
The heads have disappeared. It has all happened 
so quickly that I wonder if, for an instant, I have 
not been the subject of an hallucination. 
. God be praised! As the first stars shine out, 
we have passed the dangerous zone. Henceforth 
we are in Indian territory, once more the guests, 
friends and proteges of noble England. 

Just the same, I cannot think of this little day's 
frolic without telling myself that I almost lived 
there a page of adventurous romance. 



CHAPTER XII 



ON THE ROCK OF GWALIOR 

An islet lost ... on land — A critical ascent — Gods and genii 
in high relief — The hundredth tiger — "Refreshments" with 
wild animals — A Nimrod and a philanthropist — Deserted 
streets — What the secretary, His Highness's chamberlain, 
qualifies as a "very big word." 

O you know Sark, the pearl of the 
Channel Islands? It rises abruptly 
above the Channel, long and nar- 
row like the spine of a wild beast 
ready to spring; not a beach, not a 
harbor; one lands there ''a la 
brusque," as the sailors say. 

I thought of the basalt islet, this morning, as I 
made the ascent of the Rock of Gwalior. It rises 
out of the endless plain like an island lost in the 
sea; like Sark, it has the same wild aspect, the 
same jagged setting where the exiled Hugo con- 
ceived his desperate struggle between Gilliatt and 
the octopus. 
At the foot of the fastness — whither an armored 

"5 




ii6 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

"side-car," emblazoned with His Highness's arms, 
came to deposit me — an elephant awaits me, ac- 
coutred with bells and decked with a scarlet sad- 
dle-cloth bordered with green. We are off! . . . 
We are climbing the difficult slope to the rock it- 
self. This road is so hard, so painful to the pachy- 
derm's feet, the upward slope is so steep, that they 
have had to hollow out a sort of series of steps in 
its inclined plane. Every plunge of the animal 
makes me pitch in an alarming fashion; I am 
seized with an appalling fear as we hug this preci- 
pice over which I feel myself in danger every in- 
stant of being thrown. And then, if the girth 
were to burst? . . . Come, let us not think of all 
these things, let us stiffen ourselves, let us cling 
tight. Sursum corda! What a fairyland, that 
expanse of white houses, those palaces, those tem- 
ples and those parks, those ponds and, further off, 
that yellow desert, broken by little copses and high 
grasses — the preserve where the king hunts the 
tiger — all this seen from aloft, from an altitude 
that almost gives one vertigo. . . . And what an 
incomparable situation from the strategic point of 
view! They tell me that the Mahratta sovereigns 
knew how to take advantage of it and surrounded 
it with an enclosure of strong ramparts that close- 
ly hugged the sides of the island — lost on land! 



ON THE ROCK OF GWALIOR 117 

I can understand, therefore, the difficulties of the 
English in conquering this stronghold which in 
olden times was considered impregnable. Many 
are the things to be seen from this platform: the 
ancient zenana, decorated in the Mussulman fash- 
ion with arabesques and with little lozenges in 
blue porcelain of a most graceful effect; the prison 
of the captives, barely lighted with a tiny window, 
which was peopled by the mere royal caprice. 
Further away is the Bhao, a heavy, thickset tem- 
ple, the general conception of which somewhat 
recalls the Khmer monuments and about which 
run allegorical bas-reliefs. Then a well, a 
cemetery. . . . 

But the veritable marvel is the descent on the 
other side of the rock. It is a sloping descent, the 
length of the monolithic block, where the Jainist 
devotion of this people has hollowed and sculp- 
tured gigantic high-reliefs which one sees as one 
passes by, under the hanging bindweeds. An orgy 
of sculpture! There are large figures and small, 
middle-sized, fat, thin, upright, seated, recumbent, 
kneeling and especially crouching — of these gods 
and prophets with their great almond-shaped eyes, 
whose mouths keep ever at the line of the lips a 
scoffing, evil expression. And the goddesses! I 
see here and there a swarm, a profusion, a super- 



ii8 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

abundance, all slim and large-hipped, with the 
great toe lifted up, guarding in their attitude and 
their gestures a little of that gloomy passivity 
which made them, even in the Brahmanic 
Olympus, inferiors and not equals. Then, those 
colossal nudes: the Tirthankaras, Adinath and 
Parvasnath, two of the twenty-four precursors and 
founders of the Jain schism. And others of the 
chiefs, mutilated but still menacing and fierce. . . . 
This descent, on the back of an elephant, 
through this thicket of divinities, demoniac, ter- 
rible, sneering — it is India, all India, concrete and 
synthesized ! 



At the foot of the fortress, Lashkar, the coquet- 
tish little modern town with its shining, immac- 
ulate terraces, lives like an indolent, pampered 
parasite at the expense of the prince, who is one of 
the most hospitable alive. 

''He is also a mighty hunter before the Lord," 
remarked one of his chamberlains who accom- 
panied me and took me to visit the palace. "You 
know. Monsieur, that His Highness has just ex- 
ceeded his hundredth tiger! I might add that he 
is a devoted naturalist. You see these glass cases?" 



ON THE ROCK OF GfVALIOR 119 

Indeed, I make my homage to the taste and the 
spirit of classification which have presided over 
the installation of this museum. Everything is 
labeled in the European fashion; there are speci- 
mens, in these collections, which our museums 
would have good reason to envy. The Mahara- 
jah's predilection for animals has caused him to 
divide off, along the edge of the harem, two great 
spaces planted with shrubs and trees, surrounded 
by high walls and reserved, one for lions, the other 
for tigers. The magnificent animals move there 
at their ease, leaping and snorting at liberty in a 
surrounding space of ten or twelve acres. A kiosk 
has been set on top of the wall at each corner, to 
enable the guests of His Highness to take tea 
while watching the animals feed — a truly Nero- 
nian spectacle! Swarms of eagles, vultures and 
crows soar and flutter above the arenas, watching 
the gazelle or the live hare which the great cats 
are already fascinating with their phosphorescent 
eyes. On the ridge of the walls the peacocks 
smooth with their beaks their sumptuous, unreal 
feathers, indifferent to the approaching carnage. 
There is the very note of Asia. 

And all about, the parks. . . . Parks combed by 
an army of expert gardeners, parks irrigated by 
canals, so vast that, in order to cross them, even 



I20 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

to take care of them, the king has built a little 
railway through them, which also connects the 
palace and the station. Everywhere an unbridled 
luxury of domesticity. Everywhere, too, I hasten 
to add, a generous royal care to embellish the cap- 
ital and succor the poor. He is a philanthropist, 
this prince; I can see it in the way in which he has 
organized the municipal and sanitary services of 
his city. I think I am dreaming as I observe the 
cleanliness of this great street of Sarafa which 
leads to the square of the same name. There are 
several striking new buildings there, in a gay, 
Oriental style, resembling those of Bombay: the 
bazaar, the European theater, the printing-house, 
the Victoria Memorial covered market, the treas- 
ury, the post office. Still, it all rings out of tune 
in this distinctly Asiatic scene, in this dust where 
the dogs frolic helter-skelter as they once did in 
Constantinople, on this road where the native 
ikkas and other uncouth vehicles roll by. 

There is little life in the streets. I am struck 
by this and I cannot resist asking an explanation 
from His Highness's special secretary who re- 
ceives us in the prince's absence; the latter is un- 
able to return until tomorrow, in time for the 
"purdah-party" arranged by the Maharanee. We 
are in the great Hall of Welcome in the old palace 



ON THE ROCK OF GWALIOR 121 

(that of the guests is called the "Meeting"). The 
courtier approaches me and, lowering his voice, 
visibly embarrassed by my question, murmurs: 

"Yes, it is true. You must have been surprised 
at the lack of movement in our town. . . . Gwalior 
is rather dead just now. ... It is because — how 
shall I put it? — ^we have been having lately some 
little difficulties with health. . . ." 

"An epidemic, no doubt?" 

"Ohl good heavens, that is a very big 
word. . . ." 

"Still. . . ." 

"There has been a panic among our towns- 
people; they have gone out to the suburbs, to the 
country. As a result we have scarcely more than 
one hundred thousand inhabitants. Ah! it is not 
as it was in 1902. Then we had twenty thousand 
deaths. This time there are only a few thousand 



cases." 



"The plague, is it?" 

"Yes, but don't be uneasy — we have the am- 
pullas. You know, this new serum? . . ." 
Charming! 
There is nothing to do but go and have our tea. 



CHAPTER XIII 



TWO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 

An Englishman who knows how to see — A few words on the 
castes — Shah Jahan, the Great Mogul — A "dream of 
marble" — Muntaz-i-Mahal, the Chosen of the Palace — 
The most beautiful mausoleum in the universe — A human 
game of checkers — Sympathetic Islam. 

ILL you believe it? I have left 
Gwalior under an excellent impres- 
sion, in spite of the little sword of 
Damocles of the plague and the 
serum ampullas. My greatest de- 
sire is to return and even to have a 
long stay there. Just now, the Punjab Mail is 
carrying me with all the speed of a great, privi- 
leged express train toward the North, or, more 
exactly, toward Agra and Delhi, the two ancient 
Mongol capitals with their walls of marble, en- 
crusted with precious stones. 

In the train I have made the acquaintance of 
an Englishman, a certain friendly Mr. James 
Mayor who has a wonderful knowledge of India 

122 




TWO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 123 

and gives me many savory details of its inhabi- 
tants. Thus I learn from him that a good Hindu 
should not die in a bed but on the ground, even on 
the soil, upon which he ought to breathe out his 
last breath; the rich, once they are dead and 
stretched out on the ground, have drops of the 
water of Hurdwar sprinkled in their mouths. As 
for the famous suttees, the funeral pyres of widows, 
they are no longer seen. Eight years ago, near 
Calcutta, a widow claimed the honor of being 
burned alive with the corj)se of her husband. Be- 
fore mounting the funeral pile, in order to harden 
herself, she imitated Mucius Scevola and burned 
off her right hand in the light of a lamp. The 
Court of Bengal condemned those who took part 
and their accomplices to seven years in prison. 
Since then, no similar instances have reached the 
knowledge of the authorities. 

And the Tchemmas? Mr. Mayor tells me a 
very curious anecdote about those pariahs who re- 
pair boots, or serve as ditch-diggers, or empty the 
dirty water in hotels, under the name of Bhisties 
or Metters. One day two European sportsmen 
had been drowned in a pond while shooting ducks. 
A Sepoy passed, saw them and summoned two 
natives to go and fish them out again. The latter, 
who belonged to the modest but honorable caste 



124 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

of the Vaisyas, refused with indignation, alleging 
that a task so unclean could be undertaken only by 
Tchemmas. They were obliged to go two miles 
away to get villagers of a still more humble caste 
than that of the Vaisyas. But they were not the 
desired Tchemmas, and it was only at the point 
of the rifle that these villagers undertook the task. 

I could spend hours listening to this English- 
man, who knows how to observe at the same time 
that he is attending to his business. Did you ever 
chance to run across certain people with the po- 
tentialities of talent, even of genius, in art, science, 
pure thought? Aptitudes in germination stifled 
by the prosaic cares of the material life, which 
thus deprive humanity of much intellectual 
wealth? They pass and only graze their true 
destiny. 

This Mr. Mayor, whom I shall probably never 
see again, is one of these, perhaps. Otherwise he 
would have a whole book to write on India (and 
the English). . . . Never mind. This superficial 
conversation on the train with an affable stranger, 
who disappears at a junction station without giv- 
ing me his card or his address in India or else- 
where, suddenly illumines for me, as with a flash 
of light, the edges of the abyss which separates 
the European from the Hindu : that of the castes. 



TWO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 125 

An impassable gulf which would suffice to pre- 
vent all intercourse between two natives, unknown 
to one another, and whom the accident of a journey 
had brought together on the opposite benches of 
the same second or third class compartment! For 
example, no contact would be possible between 
a Brahman and a Vaisya. At the mere sight of 
the sacred band of the Brahmans, worn like a scarf 
by no matter what ragamuffin, the latter would 
immediately and instinctively take himself of¥ with 
a sort of religious terror. Ah! these implacable 
castes, the origin of which is lost in the mist of 
ages; they form, indeed, the most impassable bar- 
rier against the spread of Occidental civilization. 

The sacred books of antiquity all agree in stat- 
ing that this never-to-be-altered classification ema- 
nated from Brahma himself, who drew the Brah- 
mans from his head (or, according to another 
version, from his mouth), the Kchatryas from his 
arms, the Vaisyas from his stomach, and the 
Soudras from his feet. And how many other de- 
grees there are all along the length of this ladder! 
. . . That coolie who is carrying a load on his 
head would never carry it on his shoulders; he 
who sells oil cannot sell grain; a cook would never 
condescend to pluck his chicken; the butler of an 
orthodox household would never touch a jar of 



126 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

water. Why? The explanation (I should say 
the explanations) of these phenomena would re- 
quire volumes, without counting the commen- 
taries. Short of undertaking a detailed mono- 
graph on these social distinctions — which would 
be beyond the scope of this book that I have dedi- 
cated especially to the mysteries of India — would 
it not be better to admit frankly and simply that 
there are persons born to be shoemakers, tailors, 
or barbers, and others to be potters, goldsmiths or 
fishermen, finally others to carry the parasol of 
the nawab or to goad the rajah's elephant? — im- 
posed vocations to which they must all submit, 
willy-nilly, but in which they believe, which they 
practise and from which they never escape under 
pain of losing caste and falling into the impure 
mob of the pariahs, the Poulias and other outcasts. 
Nor must it be imagined that this punishment is 
reserved for the lower classes. No less than the 
inferior Soudras, the superior Vaisyas and Kcha- 
tryas, even the Brahmans can be subject to this 
supreme catastrophe. 

This explains so many dreary or despairing 
marriages between young people of the same rank 
who, under pain of .losing caste, are forbidden by 
the terrible Law of Manu to form an alliance with 
any other caste. The degradation attached to any 



TWO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 127 

such infraction — that is to say, the loss of caste, 
would be equally incurred in other cases, such as 
touching a pariah, the forgetfulness of certain re- 
ligious practices, the use of forbidden foods. 
Against this force of inertia, endured with so much 
passivity or fanaticism, all the Catholic and 
Protestant evangelical attempts have beaten fruit- 
lessly, without any hope of success. Buddhism 
itself, the great leveler of social conditions, has 
been unavailing and almost powerless before the 
omnipotence of the Brahmans and the blind obsti- 
nacy of their followers — I was about to say their 
victims. 

The superior caste of the Brahmans is itself 
infinitely subdivided. The day on which it ceases 
to exist will mark the end of all the others, which 
exist only as its satellites. Although I shall have 
occasion to speak in several chapters of this book 
about the officiating or priestly Brahmans, it seems 
worth while to slip in a few brief observations 
concerning the society of the Brahmans, from 
which these excessively influential priests are 
recruited. 

In the first place, the following exterior and 
distinctive signs, reveal them to the veneration of 
the faithful: the symbolic mark on the forehead, 
the shaven head with the little tuft at the top (like 



128 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

the Mussulman), the uncovered throat, allowing 
the crossed cord of hemp or wool to be seen.. Those 
among them who do not take the vows of their 
religion are allowed to wear a long robe and a 
turban; their wives also wear the large veil and 
a narrow, sleeveless garment which covers the 
upper part of their bodies. The most learned 
among them are astronomers or astrologers. 
Others, the Pandidapapans, are the secretaries of 
princes or the cashiers of banks; still others, the 
Tatiodipapans, consecrated to Siva, live on ofifer- 
ings in exchange for prayers; finally others, the 
real ecclesiastics, are in charge of the services in 
the Vishnu pagodas. Among these last, who are 
called Papan-Vaishenavans, we may distinguish 
the Vanasprastras, who must be at least forty years 
of age, and the Sanyashis or hermits, who can 
count twenty-two full years of solitude and con- 
templation. 

The second superior caste, that of the Kchatryas, 
seems to have been, from all time, dedicated to the 
profession of arms. That is to say, it includes in 
its ranks potentates and warriors, from the noblest 
and most virile blood in India, whether the for- 
tune of their birth has made them Hindu mahara- 
jahs, or their conversion to the Mohammedan 
faith has made them nawabs. Look at their 




AGRA — THE SULTANAS' PISCINA 




MADRAS — AN INSURGENT HINDU BEING TAKEN TO PRISON 



TWO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 129 

women; they are all, irrespective of their religious 
faith (since we are speaking here of social classes), 
dressed in the richest and most varicolored gar- 
ments, living in sumptuous surroundings, in an 
unheard-of luxury as regards dress, servants, 
houses, camels and elephants. To this caste, to 
speak geographically and ethnographically, be- 
long the Mahrattas, the Rajputs, the Sikhs and 
also the Nairs of Malabar, who still practise the 
communization of women. 

Let us pass to the Vaisyas, the third category in 
the religious order. This is also a rich caste which 
is composed of agriculturists, cattle breeders, gar- 
deners, wholesale merchants, in general well clad 
and with good incomes, who are curiously divided 
into tribes of the right and the left hand and who, 
with the exception of the tribe of the Banians, are 
permitted to use meat. And finally, let us say a 
word about the Soudras, the fourth and last of 
the superior castes. These include the following 
trades: artisans, workmen, servants, constrained 
under pain of utter disgrace to follow the paternal 
profession. Whoever is born a blacksmith cannot 
die a laundryman, and so forth. Especially note- 
worthy is the case of the potters or Cossevers, all 
of them votaries of Siva Tandava. They are not 
included in the classifications of the right-hand 



130 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

and the left-hand tribes, a privilege that has fallen 
to them from the consideration in which the In- 
dians hold the manufacture, repairing, preserva- 
tion and purity of vases and jars, and also the role 
of bandaging and caring for wounds which has 
devolved upon them. Certain of these potters who 
are charged with the manufacture of sacred uten- 
sils have become rajahs. Nevertheless, there is 
nothing in the professional apparatus of these men 
which sharply differentiates it from other work: 
a simple horizontal wheel, turning on a pivot 
which enables them to shape the clay. The potters' 
wives all wear a large waist-cloth of dotted linen, 
which leaves one breast and a portion of the ab- 
domen uncovered. The incredible lightness of 
the vases manufactured by their husbands allows 
them to carry as many as seven or eight on their 
heads. 

Succeeding the Soudras come the inferior, 
humbler and — let us admit it — somewhat despised 
castes, the mixed products of illegitimate mar- 
riages between different ranks of society, and bene- 
fitting in a fashion from a tacit and legal amnesty. 
After these, in a vile and obscure medley, come the 
Parayans or pariahs of the North and the Poulias 
of the South, who are synonymous with shame and 
infamy. However much it may affront our pride 



TWO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 131 

as Europeans, we, in the eyes of Hindus of good 
caste, are included among those who are disin- 
herited by birth. I will add, by way of some con- 
solation, that the same is true of Mussulmen, like 
ourselves impure eaters of cows. The pariahs, 
to give them their generic name, practise the low- 
est and most despised of trades. They skin animals 
that have died of sickness, tan the skin and feed on 
their flesh. All pure castes are forbidden to use 
anything that has even been touched by them, such 
as wells from which they have drawn water. A 
pariah who merely dared to sit down on the mar- 
gin of an ordinary well would inevitably be stoned. 
Born under the stigma of an indelible opprobrium, 
these unfortunates camp outside of the common 
walls; in the fields they are given the most arid 
spots and the ones that are the furthest removed 
from any inhabited center. It is therefore not 
astonishing that they have become what such a 
law of proscription would naturally make them, 
coarse, fierce creatures, dirty and shameless. The 
same is true of the Poulias of the Malabar coast, 
slaves of the quasi-Kchatrya Nairs, who live in 
an even more wretched state of abject misery, rele- 
gated to the unwholesome rice-plantations, lodged 
pell-mell in insanitary huts, fallen so low that they 
have not the right to look a Hindu of an inferior 



132 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

caste in the face, so that some of them, wandering 
in the mountains or perched on trees, are reduced, 
when they are hungry, to howling dismally and 
striking their stomachs. 

Whatever may be said by our theosophists of 
London and Paris, who are in love with esoteric 
Brahmanism and Vedantism, such religious and 
social excesses condemn a great people, meant for 
a noble and glorious destiny, to eternal servitude. 

Agra I The marble glory of Agra! 

A white frame, of a polar whiteness that fatigues 
the retina, through which move in a confused mass 
palanquins, carts, dervishes with beards reddened 
with henna or dyed a paradoxical vermilion, mad- 
men with uneasy eyes, groaning cripples, stage- 
players and mountebanks with up-curled Turkish 
slippers — like those of the Greek evzones at the 
Tournoyante Fustanelle — fakirs holding on a leash 
a couple of fighting rams with gilded horns. Few 
or no women. How typical this all is of northern 
India I 

I visit the Fort at once. People have said to me : 
"You will be astonished!" I am more than that; 
I am overwhelmed, yes, positively overwhelmed 
with admiration and emotion. Imagine a dream 
mosque of purest white marble, with exquisitely 
proportioned, symmetrical bell-towers, with vast 



TWO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 133 

paved courtyards, with aerial colonnades that sup- 
port an open-work roof, and you will perhaps have 
some idea of what my eyes are contemplating at 
this moment. There in this Diwan-i-Am, Shah 
Jahan, the Great Mogul, dispensed justice on his 
black throne; here in this Naginah Musjid, re- 
served for the ladies of the court, this same Shah 
Jahan was held as a prisoner of state by his own 
son, Aurengzed ; further on, in that little octagonal 
pavilion which has no name and which looks out 
over the clayey waters of the Djumna, Shah Jahan 
— still he, always he — died with his nearly sight- 
less eyes fastened upon the Taj-Mahal, which he 
had built for the glory of his well-loved wife, 
Arjmand Banu, surnamed Muntaz-i-Mahal, the 
Chosen One of the Palace. 

The next day, in memory of the sublime lover, 
I make a pilgrimage to this royal mausoleum 
which Sir Edwin Arnold has called "the marvel 
of Agra, the crown of the world, the tomb with- 
out a peer." Others have called it "the Dream of 
Marble." ... It is a large building of white 
marble, veined with pearl gray and flanked by 
four minarets, rising from a platform and ap- 
proached by a straight avenue bordered with low 
cypresses and made beautiful with fountain-basins, 
in the French style. In fact, we can recognize here 



134 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

the signature of one of Le Notre's pupils, one of 
our countrymen named Austin de Bordeaux, 
whom Shah Jahan engaged in 1630 as architect in 
chief. At his order and at great expense they 
brought the white marble from Rajputana, the 
yellow marble from the coasts of Nerbuddah, the 
black marble from Chaorkoh, crystal from China, 
jasper from the Punjab, cornelian from Bagdad, 
turquoise from Thibet, agate from Yunnan, lapis- 
lazuli and sapphires from Ceylon, coral from 
Arabia, diamonds from Punnah (Bundelkund) — 
many of these precious stones were torn from their 
settings at the taking of Agra by the British troops 
— onyx from Persia and finally amethysts from the 
Urals. More than 20,000 workmen toiled unin- 
terruptedly for seventeen years at this tomb of 
unearthly beauty, the apotheosis of the love of the 
most munificent of husbands. That was four cen- 
turies ago. . . . And today, tomorrow, forever 
human eyes will fill with tears at the sight of the 
two tombs, side by side, in which these perfect 
lovers sleep their last sleep. 

Still other mausoleums add to the glory of Agra, 
without, however, having cost those who built 
them what the Taj cost — 33 millions! For ex- 
ample, there is that of Prince Etmad-Dowlah, on 
the hither side of the Djumna, a large monument 



TJVO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 135 

with four towers of white marble, also like lace- 
work, which are adorned with rich incrustations 
and delicate sculptures; and there is that of Akbar 
the Mogul at Sikandra, of an extraordinary maj- 
esty of line and proportion. A few miles further 
on, by automobile, I reach the Mussulman Pom- 
peii : Futtehpore Sikri. I give it the name Mus- 
sulman Pompeii intentionally, because its found- 
ing by Akbar was the result of a desire expressed 
by his favorite. She complained at Agra of head- 
aches and indispositions; so the Emperor, in order 
to please her, presently decided to move with his 
court and take up his residence at Futtehpore 
Sikri. A whole forest of stone rises up there, in- 
tact, deserted, abandoned, for this caprice of the 
sultana lasted only ten years. Everything has re- 
mained, in order, immutably calm and beautiful. 
One might call it a city asleep. . . . 

How many women, even those whom the Roy- 
Soleil loved, have been the object of a worship so 
gallant? Perhaps only Scheherezade, whom Dr. 
J. C. Mardrus has resuscitated for us in his incom- 
parable translation of the Thousand and One 
Nights, 

This Mongolian epopee of the Bahadur-Shahs, 
of the Jahangirs, I am evoking at this moment at 
Delhi — at Delhi which today has become the capi- 



136 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

tal of the Empire, the victorious rival of Calcutta. 

Through the gate of Lahore, following the cren- 
elated walls — this northern India is certainly 
made up of citadels — I enter the Fort. The same 
magnificence as at Agra, the same abundance of 
decorated, filigreed, carefully carved buildings. 
Here, too, Austin de Bordeaux left his stamp, par- 
ticularly on that flagged pavement on the Square 
of the Emperor, which represents flowers and ani- 
mals on a black background. Elsewhere there are 
the baths of the courtesans ; further off is the Moti- 
Musjid, or pearl of the mosques, ideally white. 
Finally, the Diwan-i-Khas draws my delighted 
glance. Was it not there that Akbar, seated on 
the "Throne of the Peacocks" (at present in the 
possession of the Shah of Persia), pronounced that 
famous sentence which his successors had inlaid 
along the cornices: ''// there is a heaven upon 
earth, it is here. It is here. Here alone/' 

Another royal fantasy. In one of these courts, 
the name of which I have forgotten, a great square 
of black and white flagstones served as a checker- 
board for the same emperor. Black-skinned or 
white-skinned slaves, real knights, the Indian 
equivalent for bishops, towers, a sultana and a 
vassal prince served as living chessmen for the 
august player who, from an elevated seat, directed 



TWO MONGOLIAN CAPITALS 137 

the game with his ivory scepter against his partner 
Dewan, seated on the other side. The whole as- 
tonished court watched this unusual contest and 
applauded the fortunate moves of the Grand 
Mogul. 

There are so many, many things to see in this 
Delhi, justly called the Rome of Asia, that if the 
traveler wishes to see the rest of India he is 
obliged to limit somewhat the scope of his investi- 
gations. To tell the truth, at the time of my first 
visit I had not sufficiently seen Delhi and its envi- 
rons ; I had to complete my visit during the course 
of my second trip to India. So I pushed on to the 
ruins of Katub-Minar, where rises a tower of pink 
granite two hundred and forty-one feet high and 
with three hundred and seventy-nine steps, built 
in the twelfth century of our era to commemorate 
Mussulman victories. Very stirring, also, is that 
tomb of the poet Emir-Khusram, whose glory ap- 
proaches that of Firdousil And so many others, 
which I can still see with my mind's eye. ... A 
tedious enumeration! These things have to be 
seen. Description can give only an imperfect idea 
of them, because it lacks that sun, th^t color, that 
atmosphere which are its triumphant aureole. 
This is the case, for example, with the Djumna- 
Musjid, the most beautiful mosque in the world 



138 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

(just as the Taj of Agra is incontestably the great- 
est mausoleum in the universe). It was built in 
1644 by Shah Jahan; five thousand workmen took 
part in the construction of its three monumental 
stairways of forty steps each, its court, in which 
10,000 of the faithful can gather about the foun- 
tain of ablutions, its gateways, its domes, and its 
minarets, from which the muezzin calls out his 
summons at the hours of prayer. A revel of 
marble, a debauch of porphyry and onyx I And 
all this to shelter a few precious relics — old Ko- 
rans of the twelfth century, slippers of the 
Prophet, filled with jasmine, carrying the imprint 
of his feet, one hair from his mustache. . . . This 
veneration does not make me smile. I am too 
infinitely respectful of religions and faiths of 
which the sincerity and piety are above question. 
The Mohammedan confession in India is so 
decked with splendor that one forgets its puerili- 
ties and extravagances and can feel for it only a 
charmed sympathy. 

Is this change of attitude due to the enthusiasm 
of art that seizes you irresistibly in these two fairy- 
like capitals, or to the intrinsic virtue of Islam? 

Montaigne would have said: "How can I 
know?" 

And Rabelais: "Perhaps!" 




CHAPTER XIV 



HOLY MUTTRA 

In the heart of an eclogue — Life and adventures of an Aiyan 
Melibee — The eighth avatar of Vishnu — ^A gay god — 
The paradise of beasts — The meeting with a five-footed 
cow — Are these reptiles? — The vegetarian invocation to 
Krishna. 

ETWEEN Agra and Delhi, on one 
of the banks of the Djumna, far 
from the profane glance of the im- 
pure meleks (as they call such 
sacrilegious "eaters of cattle" as 
ourselves) rise the terraces of the 
pretty and picturesque little city of Muttra. By 
some miracle it has escaped the attention of the 
organizers of "Tours in India." The Cook par- 
ties never or rarely include it in their itinerary. 
No hotel, no restaurant, no bar, not even postal 
cards! A unique state of things v^^hich enchants 
me. For all this, we must not be egoists and — 
since a high official in Delhi advised me secretly 
to make a pilgrimage to this holy city dedicated 

139 




140 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

to the memory of Krishna the Seducer — let us 
share with our readers the benefit of this good 
fortune. So much the better if those of them who 
are going to travel in India some day are enabled 
to enjoy, as I did, one of the most delicious im- 
pressions of freshness in this country, so grand but 
usually so somber and tormented. 

Nothing, in spite of all, is easier than to get to 
Muttra, a station which, I repeat, is on the line 
that connects the two ancient Mongol capitals. It 
is a good thing to provide ourselves in advance 
with a comfortable and substantial lunch, unless 
we wish to brave the cruel station kitchen. In a 
quarter of an hour, a vehicle of sorts will go down 
the slope which leads to the Djumna and deposit 
you in the very center of the city. This city, if 
I may be pardoned for the comparison, is the 
Paray-le-Monial of India, Benares remaining al- 
ways and in spite of everything the Lourdes. 
There are the same crowds of pilgrims, the same 
sellers of votive offerings and medals, the same 
veneration and the same conviction. Only the 
miracles are lacking. But on the other hand, what 
marvelous, what original things to be observed and 
how utterly delightful to discover them! 

... It was a great many hundred years ago. 
Vishnu, the preserving principle of the Trimourti, 



HOLY MUTTRA 141 

decided to descend once more from the heaven of 
the Gopis to the earth. It was his eighth avatar. 
Thus says the Paramdtman: 

"He made himself the prince's shepherd, did Krishna, 
To reveal the divine nature to the tyrant king, 
Kamga. . . ." 

It was indeed a bucolic transformation, poetic 
and gallant, even the very least bit licentious — ^very 
"eighteenth century" and Watteauesque — and 
which, I imagine, must have been a great rest to 
Vishnu, exhausted and worn out by his seven pre- 
ceding avatars. 

You may judge for yourself: i, the fish Matsya, 
to save mankind from the deluge; 2, the tortoise 
Kurma, to serve as a solid base for Mount Merou ; 
3, the wild boar, Varaha, to make the earth rise 
out of his back; 4, half -man, half-lion, to slay the 
demon Hiranyaka^ipou; 5, the dwarf Vaman, to 
conquer the world from the giant Bali; 6, the 
Brahman Paragou-Rama, to exterminate the 
Kchatryas, the oppressors; 7, Prince Rama- 
Tchandra, to overthrow Ravana, king of the 
Rakchazas. . . . All very elusive and very ter- 
rible tasks, and, in any case, most fatiguing. 

Now the idyll opens, and the god gives himself 
up to it with all his heart. After having crushed 
the wicked serpent Kali, he goes all over the coun- 



142 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

tryside with his flocks, pulls their garments off 
the bathing girls, talks gallantry to the shepherd- 
esses, plays the flute for them, profits by their 
inattention to milk their cows under their noses, 
and finally seduces them all, or nearly all — 16,000, 
according to the sacred books. Then this flighty 
lover, this Hindu Lovelace, would have begun his 
sentimental escapades all over again, if Brahma 
and Siva had not energetically restored order. Did 
not one of his last pranks — if I may be pardoned 
the irreverence of the word — bring him a severe 
reproof from his peers? Listen to this verse from 
the Purdnas, in which Krishna deserts nothing 
more nor less than a goddess, his wife — I should 
say one of his wives, the devi Radha, to fly to the 
arms of a simple nymph, the delightful Viraja! 
This is too muchl . . . And the incorrigible fel- 
low is summarily recalled to propriety and to heav- 
en. Vishnu's only punishment will be having to 
repair, a few centuries later, the too human follies 
of that bad fellow, his representative, at the time 
when he is stigmatizing Buddhism the liberator. 
Buddhism the abolisher of castes, Buddhism the 
rival which, in its turn, is to conquer the world. 

"From a watcher of flocks, he made himself a Buddhist 
monk, 
In order to preach false doctrines to the impious. . . ." 



HOLY MUTTRA 143 

Truly, now, do you not find it amusing, the 
earthly adventure of this gay god, who is pugna- 
cious, something of a practical joker and very 
much of a rake? It is Pan, breathing in his flute, 
or Apollo singing. . . . Heu! Woe to you, pass- 
ing beauties, who listen to him. 

Muttra celebrates all this, Muttra that knew 
the joyous bathing parties of the Aryan Melibee 
and the prolonged siestas under the tender leaves 
of the moussendes and the flowering ixoras, and the 
mad pursuits of the brown-skinned dryads, 
crowned with jasmines, cinnamon flowers and 
white roses, the moonlight talks when the divine 
shepherd with the indigo skin — as the old minia- 
tures show him — held under the charm of his per- 
suasive tongue the village girls and the great white 
zebus kneeling around him. A fresh oasis in 
which the imagination rests and relaxes after the 
fevers and the ghostly oppressions of Ellora, that 
somber crypt with its nightmare pandemonium. I 
shall think of it later, this Eden-like Muttra, when 
I explore the putrid ghats of Benares and the sin- 
ister caverns of Madura. For me Muttra will 
always exhale the gentle and intoxicating perfume 
of an eclogue: 

"... sub tegmine fagi.** 



144 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

And what a touching intimacy — others might 
say promiscuity — of beasts with menl . . . Be- 
cause Krishna petted them, these dumb and hum- 
bler brothers, the people revere them today. In 
the market-place, little prying foxes and white- 
headed vultures share fraternally the scraps of 
food that lie about under the paternal and debonair 
eyes of the gray buffaloes. Up above, on the roofs 
of the houses, swarms of monkeys (the city num- 
bers more than 10,000 of them) gravely hunt for 
fleas. In a few moments they will come gambol- 
ing down from the cornices to collect their scraps 
from the human feasts. I shall touch them, I 
shall almost caress them — almost — for one would 
think they suspected that I am not one of their 
own people, I who in the Occident shut up their 
kindred in barred prisons! . . . But how amusing 
they are to watch, these four-handed beasts, so 
"natural" in their grimaces, their suppleness, their 
malice, and also in- the maternal rocking of their 
little ones. 

Noon. I pass a procession in rags and tatters. 
A strolling showman is leading about the miracle 
of his five-footed calf ("a teratological foot that 
protrudes from its back"). Loungers accompany 
him. Not gamins but full-grown men, old men, a 
few women, their amber-colored arms holding 




DELHI — THE DIWANIKHAS OF THE GREAT MOGULS 




DELHI — THE FIRST IMPERIAL ENCLOSURE AND THE GATE OF LAHORE 




MUTTRA BATHING ON THE BANKS OF THE DJUVINA 




MUTTRA — THE MARKET-PLACE 



HOLY MUTTRA 145 

copper jars on their heads over their twisted black 
hair. This procession makes its way towards the 
Djumna, where the calf is going to drink. Very 
well, let us follow it, since at Muttra the temples 
arc, So to speak, "on strjke" and it is the river 
which sanctifies and listens to prayers. We go 
down obscure little streets, little nameless streets 
which enchant me ; then the quay. Laughing girls, 
wrapped in their dripping saris, are returning 
from their ablutions, a pomegranate flower, red 
as a wound, in the corner of their lips. Let us 
make haste! Suppose they are the last! . . . 

But now, close to the last steps which are lapped 
by the sacred waters, there rises a confused com- 
motion: bubbles of air rise and break on the sur- 
face, the stir increases, then there appear thin 
necks, surmounted by the heads of reptiles. . . . 
Instinctively I recoil. The fear of the cobra is 
before all else the beginning of wisdom. But I 
quickly discover my mistake : my pseudo-serpents 
are only inoffensive, gluttonous freshwater turtles. 
There are hundreds, thousands, myriads of them, 
despite the voracity of the crocodiles and the 
gavials. The most audacious now climb up on to 
the flags, between my feet, between the four normal 
feet of the miraculous calf. Nothing could sur- 
prise that calf ; it drinks its water ingenuously, in 



146 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

little draughts, without hurrying, like a calf who 
knows what is due him for his quasi-divine de- 
formity; and the liquid falling from his disgust- 
ing lips is at once collected by ten trembling hands, 
armed with goblets. I turn with a slight repulsion 
from these drinkers, these mad hierophants. 

And then this spontaneous generation of tor- 
toises attracts and amazes me so ! 

Suddenly, at my side, a soft singing begins, a 
nasal humming through a closed mouth. The 
bubbling begins again, a new crop of flat heads 
rise from the yellow water: stretched necks, tooth- 
less mouths, opening to receive before they fall 
the daily doles of boiled rice flung to them by the 
priests, with the august gesture of sowers of grain. 

ik *k jlt ijt ^ ^ 

Kind and simple folk, observing to the letter 
the charitable doctrine of the Baghavadgita, O 
people of Muttra, who protect and give lodging to 
your monkeys, who feed your foxes, your vultures 
and your tortoises, deign to receive here the praise 
of an infamous melek! 

And thou, Krishna, may thy Virgilian example 
disgust me forever with the sacrilegious beefsteak I 



CHAPTER XV 



INDIA ONCE REVOLTED HERE 

In the country' of Nana-Sahib — Sou/enirs of the Insurrection of 
1857 — The massacre at the Bridge of Cawnpore — At the 
scene of the drama — The heroic resistance of the garrison 
of Lucknow — When will the complete pacification take 
place ? 

VER since the Imperial Govern- 
ment took the place of the old 
India Company, assuming the gen- 
eral direction of affairs and the ex- 
ploitation of the country, no seri- 
ous revolt has taken place among 
these vast agglomerations of peoples, none, that is, 
except the famous insurrection of 1857, called the 
Sepoy Mutiny. 

Because the Hindus, Mohammedans or Brah- 
manists have attempted only once, at the instiga- 
tion of such a daring Mahratta agitator as Nana- 
Sahib, to free themselves from the European yoke, 
should we conclude that there has been an actual 
pacification of the peoples of this peninsula? It 

147 




148 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

would be bold to affirm this. There still remains 
in these same Mahratta provinces of Gwalior and 
•Baroda, and also in Rajputana and Bengal, a seri- 
ous ferment of hatred which is developing and 
reveals itself in the outward signs of an ill-dissimu- 
lated phobia against their alien guests. A proof 
of this was the Shwadeshist movement of the 
Babus, at the time of the recent troubles over the 
Partition, or the administrative separation, of 
Assam from Bengal. Everyone knows that there 
exist in Calcutta secret societies, the ramifications 
of which extend as far as Burmah. Propaganda 
by deeds, direct action, political assassination have 
been widely advocated. Before the Great War of 
1914-1918, not a month passed without a bomb's 
bursting in the capital, without a train's beijig de- 
railed on one of the great lines, without a revolver 
being fired in the heart of the Bengal University 
itself, leading to disturbances and street riots. The 
formidable world conflagration suddenly revealed 
to us an India remaining loyal, save for a few 
insignificant troubles in the northeast and on the 
Afghan* frontier, along that same Khyber Pass of 
which I have already spoken. In this way Great 
Britain was able to put to the test, as France did 
with its Barbary possessions, the loyalty of the 
Brahman, Buddhist, Mohammedan and Jain pop- 



INDIA ONCE REVOLTED HERE 149 

ulation of its vast and rich colony. This means 
that, more than ever, she will wish her vassals to 
benefit from that great pax Britannica, the excel- 
lent results of which I have already praised 
elsewhere. 

Nevertheless, who knows whether these same 
Sepoys, whose exploits in Belgium and France, 
as well as in Palestine and Mesopotamia, we have 
watched sympathetically, might not, if they had 
wished it, in 1857, especially if they had known 
how, have liberated India forever from her Occi- 
dental masters? . . . We can say today that all 
they lacked was continuity of effort, the mutual 
help of their chiefs, solidarity among their re- 
ligious parties, in short, order and organization. 
I am thinking of all this in the express which car- 
ries me towards the two cities which formerly 
revolted, Cawnpore and Lucknow. 

Cawnpore! A mournful name that always 
sounds in English ears like the echo of one of the 
most frightful dramas in history! . . . We re- 
member that the native troops of this garrison re- 
volted in 1857, following some offense to their re- 
ligious convictions. The deposed prince, Nana- 
Sahib, placed himself at the head of the rebels and 
came to besiege the British troops at Cawnpore, 
commanded by General Wheeler. The wily ra- 



150 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

jah, impatient over the time lost because of this 
unexpected resistance, proposed to the besieged 
that they should receive the honors of war, boats 
to take them as far as Allahabad, as well as suf- 
ficient provisions to feed them until they reached 
there. These overtures, at first received with some 
distrust, were finally accepted by General Wheeler 
under the protection of a solemn oath by Nana- 
Sahib, who swore on a cow's tail that he would 
loyally observe the conditions of the surrender. 
But let us leave the story to one of the eye- 
witnesses: "On the morning of June 27," he re- 
lates, "the women, the children and the wounded 
were carried by elephant-back to the quay, where 
about twenty boats, large and small, were waiting 
for them. The able-bodied men arrived at the 
same point after having filed with arms and equip- 
ment past the besieging army. When they had 
embarked all flung themselves with a sort of joy 
upon the food that had been prepared for them, 
and abandoned themselves to the current of the 
river. Then a long distance battery, which had 
been got ready, was unmasked along the shore and 
began to fire upon them. The smaller boats sank, 
others caught fire. Horsemen, plunging into the 
river, sabered most of the drowning ones who tried 
to save themselves by swimming. Only the craft 



INDIA ONCE REVOLTED HERE 151 

on which was the general was able to use oars and 
get away. Unfortunately, the boat went aground a 
short distance from there and those who were on 
it, sixty Europeans, twenty-five women, a little boy 
and three young girls, were taken back as prisoners 
to Cawnpore." 

Then occurred the atrocious crime, the slaugh- 
ter without parallel in the history of colonial con- 
quests, the frightful Massacre of the Well, of 
which an English oflicer who arrived a few hours 
too late has given us this haunting description: 

"Hardly had we entered Cawnpore," he says, 
*'when we rushed to find those poor women whom 
we knew were in the hands of the odious Nana; 
but we soon learned of the frightful execution. 
Tortured by a terrible thirst for vengeance and 
filled with the thought of the frightful sufferings 
these unhappy victims had had to endure, we felt 
strange and savage ideas awake in us. BurnijQg 
with anger and half mad we rushed toward the 
terrible place of martyrdom. Coagulated blood, 
mixed with nameless debris, covered the ground 
of the little room in which they had been impris- 
oned and rose to our ankles. Long tresses of silky 
hair, torn shreds of dresses, children's little shoes 
and playthings were strewn over the befouled 
earth. The walls, smeared with blood, bore the 



152 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

traces of frightful agonies. I picked up a little 
prayer-book the first page of which bore these 
touching inscriptions: '27 June, left the boats. . . . 
7 July, prisoners of Nana; fatal day!' But these 
were by no means the only horrors that awaited 
us. Far more horrible still was the sight of that 
deep and narrow well in which were heaped up 
the mutilated remains of these tender creatures." 

I was anxious to visit the sinister spot. In the 
Memorial Garden there rises, in the midst of the 
most splendid roses imaginable, a simple cross of 
white marble which marks the spot where those 
unfortunates were murdered before being flung, 
still quivering, in the cistern a few steps away. 
Today the curb of the well is surmounted by an 
angel, holding palms in its arms, a touching statue 
which the Italian sculptor, Marochetti, dedicated 
to the memory of the martyrs. 

Less mournful but quite as eloquent are the 
relics of the heroic English resistance at Lucknow, 
the ancient capital of the kingdom of Oudh. How 
many souvenirs there are of the mutiny in this 
residency, this Sikandra Bagh, where 2,000 Sepoys 
were killed, and in this Dilluska Palace where 
General Havelock died! 

It was a veteran of the siege. Sergeant Ireland, 
who did me the honors of the ruined but glorious 



INDIA ONCE REVOLTED HERE 153 

bombarded citadel. Everything has remained un- 
changed in its place. It is a spot of pilgrimage 
and of patriotic commemoration. From the mo- 
ment of entering, under the gate called Bailey- 
Guard, we have the feelingof a desperate struggle, 
mad, heroic, against an enemy superior in numbers 
and assisted by fire. What astonishing strength of 
character, what extraordinary tenacity on the part 
of the besieged, surrounded and vastly outnum- 
bered, as we were in 1870 at Chateaudun! 

My guide explains to me how, surprised by the 
revolt, the Europeans living in the city had taken 
refuge in this residency. The feeble British gar- 
rison, commanded by Sir Henry Lawrence, had 
made haste to join them. The palace, a three- 
story brick building, was in no way suitable for a 
defense; nevertheless, the refugees maintained 
themselves there valiantly for five months, under 
the fire of bombs which had reduced the dwelling 
to a thin shell, crumbling and smoking. When 
General Campbell arrived with reinforcements 
under the walls of Lucknow, and after a two days' 
battle (the issue of which was for some time uncer- 
tain) had succeeded in delivering the besieged. 
Sir Henry Lawrence and the greater part of his 
intrepid companions had paid for the defense of 
the place with their lives. 



154 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

How far away this all seems to me, in spite of 
the anecdotes of the veteran who accompanies mel 
Such a change has taken place in the soul of the 
Indians since these events, that I find myself won- 
dering if the domination of the English is not as 
final here as our own in Algeria and Tunis. 

I should not wish to give even the slightest of- 
fense to my Bengali and other nationalist friends 
in India, but, between ourselves, I cannot see how 
a change in the immediate order of things would 
immediately benefit them. India is not a coun- 
try, it is a mosaic of countries, far more so than 
even the Central Empires. What I do believe is 
that Great Britain will not fail to show herself 
infinitely grateful to her Asiatic vassals for the 
help they gave her in 1 914- 191 8 on the battlefields 
of Europe and Mesopotamia. What I believe is 
that this same Great Britain will also not forget 
that the troops and the populations remaining in 
Indian territory refused to profit by this unique 
occasion to rise against their sovereign. Finally 
I believe that King George V — the first to dare 
to be crowned Emperor at Delhi — ^will deign to 
extend to his faithful subjects a still more open 
and friendly hand, and one stripped forever of 
the ancient iron gauntlet. 

On that day there will be in the land of Brahma 



INDIA ONCE REVOLTED HERE 155 

the same great joy that there was in South Africa 
on the return of Botha, the conqueror of the Ger- 
man forces of Southwest Africa, hero and pro- 
tagonist of the definitive Anglo-Boer union. 



CHAPTER XVI 



BRAHMANS ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES 

Benares in the morning — Cremations of the upper, middle and 
lower castes — The horror of the funeral pyres of the 
Pariahs — The Brahman lives off the altar — Priests of the 
Temple of the Cows and the Temple of the Monkeys — 
Yogis and Parahamsas — Sublime words of the Bag- 
havadgita. 

O Speak of the Brahmans, is not 
that to speak of Benares, the soil 
from which they spring? 

Benares is the most astonishing, 
the most formidable fact that can 
be imagined. One must have seen 
Benares in the morning, as one must have con- 
templated Stamboul at noon, and Venice at sun- 
set. Light mists float and gather above the yel- 
low waves of the Ganges, in which have already 
been mingled, as they passed Allahabad, the privi- 
leged ashes of the dead. Along the ghats or the 
terraced quays, a whole population is busy with 
its ablutions: old men bent with age, men with 

vigorous, bronzed bodies, women and young girls 

156 




ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES 157 

with sinuous shapes, amphoras on their heads, 
laughing, turbulent children. Further off, there 
are the widows, shaved according to the rite of 
Siva and going their way sadly, silently, despised, 
almost cursed, bowed under the weight of imme- 
morial prejudice. 

On the banks the priests have already lighted, 
a few at a time, the funeral pyres that will soon 
reduce to ashes the miserable cast-off garment of 
our earthly pride. Here I am again struck by 
the persistence of the castes, castes that are so 
rigorous and uncompromising in the affairs of 
everyday living. On these funeral pyres their 
proud hierarchy still makes itself felt after life. 
Thus at Benares there are three different sorts of 
cremations: those of the Brahmans and Kcha- 
tryas; those of the middle classes — Vaisyas and 
Soudras; finally those of the lower castes, the 
Pariahs, Tchemmas and others. 

The cremation of the dead member of an upper 
caste includes many special rites, prayers, incanta- 
tions and other practices. The corpse is first 
brought on a litter, covered with a large shroud, 
white for men, pink for women. Still enveloped 
in his winding sheet, the dead man is stretched by 
the river-side, the head and trunk resting on the 
bank, the lower limbs bathed by the water, for 



158 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

purification. During this time, the funeral Brah- 
mans finish arranging in rectangular and symmet- 
rical order the pieces of wood which compose the 
burning-ghat. The corpse is then laid upon it, 
while other faggots are placed above forming a 
second bed. Generally, the whole is so harmoni- 
ously arranged that the dead man almost disap- 
pears under the mass. The priests then approach 
and pronounce the liturgical prayers, while they 
sprinkle the fire with melted butter and sweet- 
smelling oils. Young officiating priests throw In- 
dian pinks and jasmine petals into the flames. 
Then once more and without any break, the priests 
add the sticks, the faggots and the kindling neces- 
sary to feed the devastating fire. For once the 
cremation has begun it must not be interrupted. 
If the fire went out or died down it would be con- 
sidered as a bad omen. 

The funeral pyres reserved for the lower castes 
are composed only of faggots, roots and left-over 
logs not yet attacked by the fire, gathered con- 
fusedly together, without order or elegance, in a 
nearly square pile, on the river bank, far from the 
palace and the votive temples. One young Brah- 
man suffices to light the fire and pronounce the 
necessary incantations. The relatives, the friends 
and the domestic animals are grouped about him 



ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES 159 

in an impassive attitude that is intensely Oriental, 
and watch with great serenity the work of 
destruction. 

More sinister and gruesome are those I shall 
call the famine pyres on which are heaped up pell- 
mell emaciated, contorted skeletons of bodies, 
hideous to see, naked, their faces twisted with 
agony, with glassy eyes no hand has closed. These 
last must content themselves with what others have 
left, half-burned faggots, knotty, smoking roots, 
which the flame has been powerless to attack, arm- 
fuls of damp straw, giving forth an acrid and suf- 
focating smoke. For these there are no incanta- 
tions, no fire sparkles joyfully, the incineration is 
long and slow, lasting not merely for hours but at 
times for one or two days. No one comes to claim 
these ignored, accursed, disinherited ashes. 

Such is the inexorable decree of Karma. 

We may well imagine that these cremations and 
other ritualistic ceremonies do not fail to bring 
in to the Brahman a pretty penny. Of this priest 
it may be truly said that he lives off the altar, with- 
out, however, attaining to the princely tithes of 
certain orthodox popes of the former Holy Rus- 
sian Empire. At Benares, the number of these 
officiators is almost incalculable; even approxi- 
mate statistics have never been compiled. There 



i6o MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

are the funeral Brahmans of whom I have just 
spoken, there are Brahmans by the thousand for 
the temples in the city, without counting those who 
serve private altars and sanctuaries, there are 
Brahmans charged with watching over the upkeep 
of the sacred animals, and finally, there are Yogis, 
or living saints. 

I have spoken, in connection with the pilgrimage 
of Krishna to Muttra on the Djumna, of the in- 
violable respect of the Hindus for all manifesta- 
tions of life, and especially of animal life. At 
Muttra, the traveler notices the presence of many 
thousands of monkeys living a sort of common life 
with the inhabitants, sharing their food and their 
dwellings — just as at noon great jars of boiled rice 
are thrown to feed the tortoises on the river ter- 
races. At Benares it is something else: the Para- 
dise of Cows, in the full meaning of the phrase 1 
These blissful beasts stroll over the conquered 
country, along the ghats or through the dark, dirty 
little streets; at their pleasure, they impudently 
steal vegetables under the noses and beards of the 
merchants, who watch them with good-natured 
smiles, thanking the divinity for the signal honor 
of her visit. 

Nor is this all ; the horned guests of the Temple 
of Cows at Benares have their regularly appointed 




RUINS OF THE LUCKNOVV MUTINY 




THE PALACE AT LUCKNOW 




BENARES — A LOW-CASTE CREMATION 




A MORNING AT BENARES 



ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES i6i 

priests and are the object, on the part of the faith- 
ful, of a thousand marks of veneration and love. 
They feed them with aromatic herbs, they bring 
them offerings, they wash them with water from 
the Ganges drawn in richly chased vessels of cop- 
per and silver. Finally, it is not rare to see certain 
fanatics gliding through the dark colonnades of 
porphyry and marble under the domes with their 
massive golden roofs, watching for the peaceful 
animals to give way to the most necessary and 
prosaic of needs. . . . Then there is a mad rush 
for the fresh dung; some smear their faces and 
hands with it; some go so far as to swallow a bit 
of it; still others carry it off in reliquaries. 

Beside these ultra-realistic and repulsive spec- 
tacles — it is true that the Parsee teaching also has 
such aberrations— I have had occasion to notice 
many touching acts of piety and kindness to old, 
infirm or sick animals. One day when I was de- 
scending the steps to the Ganges, I saw an old, 
half-paralyzed cow (the bovine race reaches here 
what Hugo calls *'the age of a great-grand- 
parent") dragging herself painfully along by her 
front legs to get a drink from the waters of the 
great river. When she had drunk, feeling she had 
become heavier, this bovine *'Burgrave" attempted 
in vain to return to the spot which she had for- 



i62 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

merly occupied. At once four young pilgrims, who 
seemed to belong to a good bourgeois caste, hur- 
ried to the animal, lifted it, and succeeded by one 
means or another in getting it back to its original 
position. I offer this fact, without comment, to 
the president of our Society for the Prevention of 
Cruelty to Animals. 

Another curiosity of Benares is the Temple of 
Monkeys. Several hundred years ago the great 
temple raised to the goddess Durga was invaded 
one day by a troup of monkeys come, no one knew 
how, from the near-by jungle. The quadrumanes 
installed themselves even in the sanctuary and on 
the borders of the fishpond, with its encircling 
steps, where slept a noisome, greenish water. The 
superstition of the Hindus was struck by this 
prodigy; they saw in the presence of the monkeys 
a heavenly embassy sent by Hanuman, the monkey- 
god and ally of men, whose combats and warrior 
virtues were celebrated by the sacred books. From 
that day forward the altar of the goddess was 
deserted; prayers and pilgrimages were devoted no 
longer to Durga the Dark, but to Hanuman the 
Valorous. Today, this population of monkeys has 
risen to several hundreds of grimacing and ges- 
ticulating families; and it is one of the tourist's 
amusements, in passing through Benares, to bring 



ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES 163 

them fruits and dainties, which they share fra- 
ternally with the goats and pigs, under the eyes 
of their two Brahman guardians. 

Above these inferior priests, dominating them 
with all his serene and somewhat disdainful pride, 
rises the noble figure of the Yogi, the living saint, 
the Master, he who really possesses the power of 
assembling the elements and performing miracles. 
He is by no means the servant of the animals nor 
does he make any sale or display of his office or 
his science; he does not market it or make any 
money out of it. But modest, or conscious of his 
formidable power, he hides or isolates himself 
from humankind. You no longer, or almost never, 
meet him in the low plains of the peninsula of 
Hindustan ; you must go in search of him to dis- 
cover him in his almost inaccessible retreats among 
the high mountains of Kashmir or Thibet, where 
he is learning to become, little by little, the Para- 
hamsa, the Sage. 

Ripened by prayer and solitary meditation, mas- 
tering his senses and abolishing Desire, which is 
useless to him since in him, as a pantheist, there 
resides the essence of all things, he turns his will 
exclusively toward the final evolution. A de- 
tached fragment of the Great Whole, he tends to 
mount up by stages to his primitive and divine 



1 64 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

state, and in order to attain it he seeks for the 
primal cause of the world. By means of his eyes 
man is master of Space ; the Yogi, by means of his 
science, creates a new sense which makes him mas- 
ter of Time. He seeks to penetrate to the sealed 
mysteries of Matter by means of pure Thought, 
and in actual practice by means of magic and in- 
cantations. This is the secret of the mentrams, the 
mentrams that preserve one from the stings of 
bees, from the venom of serpents and the claws of 
wild beasts ; mentrams which, they say, have power 
over domestic animals, over rivers, over the ele- 
ments. By means of them the Yogi can reach even 
the Unknowable. The same procedure was car- 
ried on in antiquity by the Egyptian adorers of 
Horus, the Greek mystagogues of Ceres, a few 
philosophers, philanthropists and thaumaturgists 
like Pythagoras, ApoUonius of Tyana, Buddha, 
Rama-Krishna, and other occultists who have had 
the certainty of the Divine Experience. These 
supermen cross the threshold of the Esoteric Doc- 
trine, they have the intuition of universal knowl- 
edge and probably approach Brahma the Neuter, 
the Ineffable, the Absolute, of which Brahma, the 
masculine and creative expression, has only a 
single temple in India — at Polkhar, near Ajmeere 



ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES 165 

— Brahma the Infinite, whose name the Hindus 
never pronounce without trembling. 

Would you believe it? The Yogi is the object 
of such veneration that at his death he escapes the 
ordinary cremation of other men, kings, priests, 
soldiers, artisans, beggars and pariahs, piled up on 
the brazier of the burning-ghats. Death, great 
leveler that it is, nevertheless distinguishes him 
from other mortals. They enclose his body in a 
coffin, or more often in a clay jar, and let it sink 
solemnly to the bottom of the Ganges. A perfect 
symbol, such a burial as this, of the favor which, 
in permitting him to escape destruction by fire 
(Agni), facilitates in this way the cycle of his 
future incarnations. 

So wills, so teaches the Baghavadgita, in which 
Krishna, addressing his disciples, utters these 
admirable words which Saint Augustine and the 
Fathers of the Church would not have disavowed: 

*'You hear within yourself a divine soul of 
which you are not aware, for God resides in the 
soul of every man, but few know how to find Him 
there. The man who sacrifices his desires and his 
works to the Being from whom proceed the prin- 
ciples of all things and by whom the universe has 
been formed, obtains perfection through this sac- 
rifice and approaches God, 



i66 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

''Moreover, you must know that he who has 
found God is delivered from re-birth and from 
death, from old age and from grief and drinks the 
water of immortality/* 



CHAPTER XVII 



BENARES AND ITS FAKIRS 

The mysterious quarter of Kashi— True and false fakirs- 
Conjurers, hypnotists and illusionists — The sincerity of 
the psychometrists — Voluntary martyrs and men with 
withered limbs — The miracle of the buried alive — Con- 
templator& — The fakir condemned to eat and to do nothing 
— ^Absolution without . . . perfect contrition. 

HIS Spectacle of the Brahmans on 
the banks of the Ganges or in their 
temples, is still merely a general, 
superficial, external spectacle that 
can satisfy only the tourist, the 
globe-trotter. The philosopher 
must seek further if he wishes to make his deduc- 
tions. Plunging to the depths of this abyss of ob- 
scurities and splendors, he ignores the sink of im- 
purities, the filthy pollution of the sanctuaries, in 
order to extract from it the immaterial lesson, the 
foretaste of the pure and infinite joys of the Ini- 
tiation. And this visit — I was going to say this 
exploration — we shall no longer make in the mag- 
nificent and corrupt Benares of the ghats, but in 

167 




i68 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

native Kashi, that mysterious and inviolate quarter 
of the falcirs, the thaumaturgists and other v^^orkers 
of miracles. Thither I shall try to lead and to 
guide you. But shall I ever be able to describe 
the indescribable? 

I understand how some might object that in my 
passionate admiration, my adoration for India, I 
may have been a victim of auto-suggestion or have 
deceived myself v^rith appearances, or have worked 
up my enthusiasms from what I had already heard 
and read in Europe. But none of that would be 
true. I have only been the objective observer of 
a calm, regular and serene piety, an august con- 
tempt for death, a lofty indifference for all that 
must return to the earth. Little do I care if the 
Hindu believers venerate in their temples of 
marble and gold, holy cows or impudent, thieving 
monkeys, or that the foot of the devotee is scanda- 
lized if it slips on the sacred excretions ! I remem- 
ber only this: for these faithful life is transitory. 
That is what I conclude from their mournful, re- 
signed, passive, vegetarian existence, perennially 
respectful of animal life, convinced abolitionists 
of desire (at times even of sensation), splendidly 
impassible before the funeral pyre which consumes 
the beloved being: father, mother, husband, child, 
brother, sister, betrothed, friend. This is what I 



BENARES AND ITS FAKIRS 169 

see in the hieratical attitude of their priests, what 
I read in the rolling eyeballs of their contempla- 
tive Rishis, their preaching Swamis, and their holy 
Yogis. 

Ah! what fine faces they have, inspired, Gali- 
lean, these pundits deciphering some old text of the 
Upanishads, in the half-light of some votive altar I 
And what a mystic aura, wild, haggard, unearthly, 
seems to flit through the blinking eyes of these 
Sanyashis, anaemic and wasted by fastings, the face, 
beard and hair soiled with ashes and dried cow's 
dung, the neck and arms weighed down with shells 
and strings of pods, who stare at you with their 
ecstatic or possessed look and send a cold shiver of 
interrogation, doubt and terror over your whole 
body I 

Often they are sincere. There are charlatans, 
too, sometimes. But if we are speaking of actors, 
are they not to be found in all the religious con- 
fessions? Mountebanks and money-changers of 
the temple, whom Jesus drove out with blows of 
the lash! It is inevitable that now and then Hu- 
manity should resume the rights of its unavoidable 
weakness, nothing here below being absolute or 
perfect. Nor does one need any profound learn- 
ing to be able to put their right estimate on sleight- 
of-hand tricks, on the so-called phenomena of the 



170 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

instantaneous germination of plants, the spontane- 
ous bursting into flame or extinction of lighted 
coals, the disappearance of objects and other feats 
of juggling. To the learned Robert Houdins the 
local color adds an exotic atmosphere of mystery. 
Others, also jugglers — with us they would call 
themselves "hypnotists" and would provide them- 
selves with fancy diplomas and the sufficiently 
cheap title of "professor" — others, I say, exercise 
and prodigiously fortify their will in order to 
amuse themselves at the expense of the simple and 
"easy" European. The hypnotic power has all the 
more force when it is exercised upon a brain 
oftenest encumbered with mean preoccupations, 
of the earth earthy, little fitted for a single and 
obstinate effort of the will. The strong fluid over- 
masters the weak fluid; between the operator and 
the subject, it is merely a matter of a few curious 
passes of suggestion. In short, just what people 
study, every day at the Salpetriere. But instead of 
calling itself electrobiology, and having as its 
founders illustrious neurologists like Charcot, 
Azam and Broca, in India it bears the name of 
fakirism and is practised by poor shivering 
wretches who, for a few pennies, will toss a rope 
into the air, "climb up the ladder" for you, in the 
exact and figurative meaning of the words. That 



BENARES AND ITS FAKIRS 171 

is probably what happened to me when I was with 
the princes of Jeypore and believed I saw a fakir 
juggle himself away and then bring an adder to 
life. With me, it must have been a case of partial 
hypnotism. 

, One of the most interesting classes of fakirs I 
encountered in India was undoubtedly that of the 
psychometrists/ or diviners. These prophets of 
the present, the past and the future reveal things 
with surprising exactitude, by merely touching 
some familiar object which you wear continually 
and which you are willing to confide to them for 
a moment. The object may have belonged to a 
dead member of your family, to one of your 
friends, or it may have been the property of a liv- 
ing person. The one essential is that it shall have 
been in permanent contact with the wearer. Thus 
it may be a watch, a pencil, a penknife, or a jewel. 
The object is handed to the diviner without a word 
being spoken. He grasps it tightly between his 
hands and strives to impregnate himself with the 
astral particles that cling to it or, more exactly, 
are crystallized upon it. After a few moments, 
the fakir sinks into a trance ; his eyes turn inwards ; 

'See my romance Pdrvati, pp. 155-158 (Albin Michel, publisher, 
Paris), and its English version by Mrs. Helen Davenport Gibbons 
(The Century Co.). 



172 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

the sweat gathers in beads on his forehead, his 
hands and arms jerk and twist convulsively. . . . 
Then suddenly inarticulate words escape from his 
lips, at first merely confused phrases, which 
speedily join themselves together so as to form a 
complete and intelligible whole, an amazing and 
circumstantial resume of the life or the tempera- 
ment of the object's possessor. It has been my own 
experience — and all travelers worthy of credence 
who have had the experience will confirm my 
words — that nine times out of ten the utterances of 
these magicians have been astoundingly correct. 
In India, the power of the psychometrists is never 
disputed, either by popular belief among the na- 
tives or scientifically in the most cultivated British 
circles. 

Let us pass to another variety of fakir, adroit 
fellows, with an eye for business, who speculate 
upon the disgust and pity of foreigners and make 
use of it to earn their living. These are the volun- 
tary martyrs, the contortionists, who will exhibit 
before you a member that has been frightfully dis- 
located for years and has the color of mortifica- 
tion. That fellow began to mortify an arm fifteen 
years ago and has succeeded in doing so by holding 
it constantly stretched heavenward : the joints have 
grown together, making any movement henceforth 



BENARES AND ITS FAKIRS 173 

impossible, the muscles have become mummified; 
the nails of the hand have grown inordinately and 
have twisted themselves like vines about the wrists. 
This one passes his life surrounded by live coals, 
half suffocated by the smoke, or lying on a bed of 
nettles, cactus points or sharp bits of iron. 

Wc must not forget those who are buried alive! 

These last offer a rare example of courage and 
education of the will. The experience which they 
undergo voluntarily is worthy of being described, 
for it necessitates a training and above all a final 
resignation, to which, speaking personally, it 
would give me but little pleasure to force myself. 
For days, weeks and months, the fakir in question 
accustoms himself to eat, drink and breathe as lit- 
tle as possible. As we can easily imagine, the prac- 
tice of breathing as little as possible is the most 
painful of these preliminary tests. In short, the 
candidate for provisional death tries to reach the 
point of suspended life, and to enter almost wholly 
into that animal petrifaction — if I may call it 
so — of the toad, the lizard and the tortoise. 

When the proper day arrives, the initiate 
stretches himself out, or, more exactly, is stretched 
out in a coffin. Brahmans seal his eyes, nose, 
mouth and ears in turn with plugs of cotton wad- 
ding and with wax. They anoint his body with 



174 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

special aromatic oils, which I suppose are also 
antiseptic and preservative. They murmur magic 
formulas and incantations over him, and in the 
presence of a great assembly of people and licensed 
w^itnesses — for in this country an event of such im- 
portance constitutes a sort of "first night" — the cof- 
fin lid is closed, screwed down and sealed over the 
living dead man, swathed in cloths and bandages. 
About the grave, which is covered with earth and 
over which they have sown some sort of grain, 
stand trusted guards, sometimes Sepoys from the 
Imperial Army, who keep watch day and night 
during the weeks or months, according to the 
period fixed by the voluntary deceased. 

Then, when the time has passed, the cofiin is 
taken out of the tomb and opened before the priests 
and the sworn witnesses. They verify the seals 
under the eye of the native magistrate, and the 
priests utter new prayers while the funeral Brah- 
mans accomplish slowly and with infinite precau- 
tion the work of resurrection. They massage the 
extremities progressively, unstop the orifices sealed 
with cotton and wax, breathe air in, apply a gentle 
friction, exercise the extensor and respiratory 
muscles and finally pull the tongue rhythmically. 
When the double function of respiration and cir- 
culation has been established, they give a few drops 



BENARES AND ITS FAKIRS 175 

of some mysterious beverage to the resuscitated 
Lazarus, taking great care, naturally, to keep all 
food away from him. In the same way that he 
has been prepared by stages for the apparent death, 
he must accustom himself, by minutely regulated 
steps, to his quasi-miraculous raising from the 
dead. Too great haste in the renewing of his or- 
gans, suspended by lethargy, would inevitably 
cause his death — a real and effective death, this 
time. 

To sum up this matter: many who have been 
interred alive, badly prepared, badly buried, or 
badly resuscitated, succumb to the trying experi- 
ence. A small number of these amateur lovers of 
the grave survive this motionless and dangerous 
sport. 

^^Ab uno, disce omnes" 

But let us continue our brief review of the prin- 
cipal and most curious voluntary martyrs. 

There are other fakirs who take it as a duty or 
as an amusement to make the tour of the peninsula 
with the soles of their feet covered with tacks, or 
by crawling on their stomachs, using only the 
movements of their abdomen and chest. Others 
absorb themselves in the contemplation of a plant 
or a vine, the growth of which they have watched 
for twenty years! All their power of attention is 



176 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

concentrated solely on the growth and develop- 
ment of a vegetable, the object of their observation. 
Unfortunately, close to these tortured creatures, 
these contemplators and do-nothings, is the wooden 
bowl, the inevitable wooden bowl, the crucible in 
which a lucrative business boils up in coppers! 

In this connection, let me recount an anecdote 
that reveals, oh, how well! the nonchalance and 
the passivity of this fatalistic race. 

I was visiting Buddha-Gaia, northern Indians 
famous place of pilgrimage, a short distance from 
Benares, and my curiosity, my appetite for f akirism 
had just been aroused by the sight of an extremely 
corpulent old man, seated under a fig-tree, at a 
short distance from the great temple with its mas- 
sive sculptures. Near this worthy were heaped 
up jars of rice, fruits and vegetables. A great 
crowd of idlers surrounded him, respectfully, 
without daring to address a word to him, content- 
ing themselves with merely touching his rags and 
laying their offerings at his feet. 

Without doubt, I was in the presence of a cele- 
brated and venerated fakir. But what was he do- 
ing? What mysterious and secret vow was he 
obeying? And no bowl beside him? It was too 
much ! 




A PALACE ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES 




BRAHMANIC FUNERALS ON THE BANKS OF THE GANGES; TO THE 
LEFT, A CORPSE IN ITS SHROUD 




BENARES — THE PILGRIMS' ABLUTIONS 





El 


^^^^HwHi^^ESr^^SP^^HBr '-' '-" *' '^ 






w%.mm '■.-■■-'• 



BENARES — A HIGH-CASTE CREMATION 



BENARES AND ITS FAKIRS 177 

Full of curiosity, I approached the group and 
questioned my guide-interpreter. 

"It is a holy man, Sahib," he answered feelingly. 

"Good heavens! I can see that! But what is 
his specialty as a fakir?" 

"Nothing, Sahib," answered my boy. "He is 
awaiting his Nirvana." 

"What, already?" 

"He is a great saint. He has sworn not to work 
or to beg, but to let himself die of hunger, if such 
is the will of Siva." 

"But . . . that well-fed air, those plump cheeks. 
, . . And then those heaped up provisions? That 
rice, those fruits and vegetables? It seems to me 
that his vow . . ." 

My boy jumped with indignation: "Oh, Sahib, 
could you think it! But the holy man has not 
asked for these provisions. They are offered to 
him. Therefore he accepts them. Surely all these 
good things ought to be eaten!" 

And when, skeptical and amused, I shrugged 
my shoulders, my turbaned guide continued em- 
phatically: "He is not a beggar. Sahib. But what 
can you expect? He dares not disobey Siva I I 
assure you that in his heart it costs him a good 
deal to eat." 

No commentary. 



178 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

But you will say either that I am mistaken or 
that I am afraid of taking away, one by one, the 
last illusions of my readers in regard to this most 
interesting corporation of fakirs. Let us be fair. 
As I have just impartially painted it, without any 
preconceived ideas of one sort or another, without 
prejudices due to ignorance or a spirit of mockery, 
this corporation, which in itself almost forms one 
of the Indian castes, remains, whatever we may 
think of it, one of the peculiarities, one of the 
oddities, one of the attractions of this extraordi- 
nary country. The fakir, even when he is a char- 
latan, a trickster, or simply lazy, contributes his 
own quite special note. I will go further and say 
that he forms a part, an integral part of the pic- 
ture, the atmosphere and the local color. This 
being so, we owe him a little of the indulgence, 
even a little of the favor and sympathy which we 
bestow so lavishly on certain heroes of our detec- 
tive stories, gentleman-burglars and other deli- 
cious rascals who are never entirely repentent 
. . . and whom we always absolve ! 



CHAPTER XVIII 



DAWN ON THE HIMALAYA 

Calcutta-London — Chandernagor unadorned — The crossing of 
Father Ganges — Darjeeling and its Thibetian bonzes- 
Sunrise over the Gaorisankar — ^A dispossessed rajah — ^The 
throne-punishment of the hermit — How one becomes 
Parahamsa. 

F Calcutta I shall say little, having 
received few impressions from it. 
It is a modern city, rather like Lon- 
don, v^^hose docks, black with smoke, 
strangely resemble those of the 
Thames (and yet this great river 
which flows past is the Howgli, an arm of the 
Ganges!). In the same way the big bridge which 
unites the ancient capital to its suburb of Howrah, 
bears a strong resemblance to the famous London 
Bridge, in its turbulence, its press of vehicles and 
the affluence of the pedestrians; only here the cab- 
horses are zebus, fastened to little carts, and the 
thronging passers-by belong to all the shades of the 

Hindu rainbow: Parsees, Bengalis, Pathans, Ba- 

179 




i8o 



MYSTERIOUS INDIA 



luches, Afghans, Burmese, Sikhs, Goorkhas, even 
a few Thibetians, Nepalese and Chinese. 

The day before I had visited Chandernagor. 

Poor Chandernagor! What illusions are dis- 
pelled at the sight of this little town lost under the 
exuberant foliage of the palms, the dear palms 
found again at lastl What a downfall since 1673, 
the date of its foundation by our Compagnie des 
Indes! . . . Today, these two thousand or so brick 
houses, ill at ease in their narrow, restricted enclo- 
sure, owe their existence to the friendly generosity 
of the English. A simple cordon of customs of- 
ficials would suffice to starve out this settlement 
and strangle in a few days its miserable little trade. 
It is useless to look for colonists; as at Yanaon, 
Karikal and Mahe the French population is con- 
fined to the Administrator, the police corporal, the 
tax-collector, the missionaries and the good Sis- 
ters. The manager of the single hotel at Chan- 
dernagor (what an hotel!) was, at the time of my 
stay, an Austrian from Trieste. There is, indeed, 
a Dupleix College, but we teach English in it 
— French being treated as optional/ On the other 
hand, and this is a small crumb of consolation, 
Chandernagor is the prey, at least as much as 
Pondichery, of the worst politics and the worst 
journalism. The elections there are a veritable 



DAWN ON THE HIMALAYA i8r 

traffic in dishonest influences in the two opposed 
camps. Finally, to complete this sad but strictly- 
true picture, I recall that it was at Chandernagor 
that the revolutionary Bengali bomb-throwers 
were accustomed to hold their meetings. It even 
used to be one of the haunts of Shwadeshism, the 
Indian nihilism. They tell me, but I have no 
other proof of it, that the anarchist paper "Yu- 
kantar," the organ of this party, was set up and 
printed in our possession, under the protection of 
our flag, and that not long ago it oflfered a reward 
for the head of any European. Sweet land! Such 
is the gratitude of a population to which England 
pays annually a fee of three hundred balls of 
opium on the condition that it does not cultivate 
this product itself! 

I try to forget these humiliating memories on 
the forward deck of the ferry-boat from Calcutta 
to Damukdia-Ghat, while I watch the boatman 
cast out his sounding-line, chanting each time, in a 
minor key, the depth of the waters of Father 
Ganges. This precaution, if I am to believe the 
keeper of the Parsee buffet, has become absolutely 
indispensable to the safety of navigation in these 
parts ; in fact, no possible sounding could map out 
a permanent river-bed; the river here displays the 
peculiarity of changing the banks along its sides 



i82 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

nearly every day. A great silence broods over this 
immense and dreary waste, edged with mists, 
through which shows, from time to time, the half- 
spectral apparition of a fisherman, hauling in his 
nets in his phantom bark. The crossing, which 
quite stirs one's emotions, takes about three-quar- 
ters of an hour, after which one changes to the 
Eastern-Bengal Railway, the track of which is 
only a meter wide. From there one reaches Sili- 
guri, a station situated at the foot of the first spurs 
of the Himalaya, four hundred feet above the level 
of the sea. 

Siliguri is the point of departure for the Lilli- 
putian train which terminates at Darjeeling. This 
line is only sixty centimeters wide, which gives its 
trains the aspect and the charm of a set of toy cars. 
Nevertheless, it carries a heavy traffic, and its en- 
gines can pull as much as fifty tons, and that on 
grades which sometimes rise one foot in forty-five. 
The slow ascent assumes a character of grandiose 
beauty, wild and austere: two locomotives, one in 
front and one behind, climb the steep slope, be- 
yond which rise the immaculate peaks of the Kich- 
ijunga chain. Bold curves and dizzying zig-zags! 
We mount up through silent, virgin forests, alter- 
nating along the slopes of the mountains with little 
bare mounds from which gushing fountains and 



DAWN ON THE HIMALAYA 183 

cascades spread out in sparkling drops over the 
moss and lichens. Then the first tea-plantations of 
Kurseong stretch their carefully spaced bushes 
over the uplands. I am already struck by the 
change in the type of the inhabitants : no more of 
those handsome profiles, with straight noses, oval 
chins, large black eyes, but a complete and ethnical 
transformation in the Mongol faces of these short, 
thickset mountaineers, of a bilious complexion, 
with undeniably almond-shaped lids, with large 
smiling mouths which no longer have that bitter, 
disillusioned, melancholy look, that racial lassi- 
tude which I have so continually noticed in most 
Indians, Aryans as well as Dravidians. 

Darjeeling! 

I allow myself to be carried off to the hotel, in 
spite of the bumps and jolts of my primitive rick- 
shaw which is dragged along by feminine arms — 
for in this anything but commonplace country the 
woman does the work of the man, who is piously 
occupied in smoking, gossiping, meditating or 
ceaselessly turning his prayer-wheel. Yes, so great 
is masculine laziness in these Himalaya that the 
poorest family counts among its everyday domestic 
utensils this precious instrument of piety, in the 
interior of which the Buddhist bonzes have written 
miles of prayers. When these litanies are once 



1 84 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

wound up, the devout man has nothing to do but 
to turn his ''cri-cri'': the prayer says itself all alone. 

****** 

I arose this morning at four o'clock. A meri- 
torious effort, but it is not every morning that we 
can watch the sun rise over one of the highest 
summits on our planet. 

A dense fog floats over everything as my furry 
pony, preceded by a guide bearing lanterns, sets 
out over the road which leads to Tiger Point. 
From there I hope to see the setting of the first 
star on the summit of Gaorisankar, called Mount 
Everest by the English. 

First, there is a sharp ascent, abrupt and fatigu- 
ing, by a zig-zag path across which my mount's 
shoe sets stones rolling every moment. My eyes, 
beginning to grow accustomed to the darkness, 
soon make out in the distance a sort of rustic chalet, 
built on a platform and dominating on one side the 
unlimited plain, the basin of the Ganges and the 
Brahmaputra, on the other the four or five suc- 
cessive levels of the mountains which rise, step 
after step, up to the gigantic white chain. 

I feel isolated, lost on this platform, in this sea 
of morning mists, which the timid light of dawn is 
piercing little by little. First, there is a diffused 




NANGA-BABA, THE ASCETIC, IN HIS WATCH-TOWER, TURNING HIS 
BACK TO THE GANGES 







.^ 



A FANATIC OF THE SECT OF SIVA, PROCEEDING ON A PILGRIMAGE BY 
ROLLING 




DARJEELING (HIMALAYA) — A THIBETAN BONZE AND HIS FAMILY 




CAWNPORE — MEMORIAL OF THE MASSACRE IN 1 8 57 



DAH'N ON THE HIMALAYA 185 

silver light, which bars the horizon with a parallel 
band, the two extremities of which grow gradually- 
less. This band of light sets glittering confusedly 
the meanderings of the rivers, streams, torrents 
and the motionless basins of the ponds, revealing 
geographically the vast network of arteries and big 
and little veins that feed the body of the peninsula 
of Hindustan. A loose mass of black clouds stands 
out fantastically against the luminous ray, which 
now slowly loses its paleness, turning to straw 
yellow, to amber and to orange. All at once the 
sun bursts through; the dark curtain is torn open 
and a lake of fire appears. How can I translate in 
words this Dantesque vision, so sinister and so 
terrifying? It seems to me that those black ravel- 
ings have become the damned, dancing their in- 
fernal, hideous and eternal round. It is beauti- 
ful, tragically beautiful, horribly beautiful. And 
yonder, the cone grows rosy, little by little, colored 
by that lake which has become an ocean. Now a 
purple sea extends before me, a blood-covered ex- 
panse on which the damned melt away, shade off 
and vanish. One would say that, in his supreme 
forbearance, God was opposing himself to the eter- 
nal torture of the condemned throughout the cen- 
turies. An era of pity, perhaps of pardon and for- 
getfulness, opening with this red-gold apotheosis 



i86 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

in which the sublime Redeemer sinks once more. 
But then what are we to think of the implacable 
vengeance of which the Scriptures speak? 

This haunting doubt pursues me into the sunken 
gorge which I now enter on the way to the hidden 
retreat of a hermit, a Parahamsa, one of those 
unknown sages who have taken refuge in the inac- 
cessible solitudes of the Himalaya. I had been 
told at Benares of this ascetic. His history has 
something of the symbolic about it. An ancient 
dispossessed rajah, he now leads in a bamboo hut 
the life of a contemplative philosopher, detached 
from all earthly desires. 

As with my guide I enter the hermit's enclosure, 
an unexpected sight nails me, so to speak, to the 
threshold. Before me, in the middle of a court, 
on a heap of vegetable rubbish where fowls are 
pecking, a motionless, smooth-skinned old man is 
seated on a throne of teak-wood, gilded, sculp- 
tured, carved by marvelous unknown artists. It 
strikes me that this shining seat must formerly have 
been encrusted with gems, to judge from the gap- 
ing settings from which stones have been brutally 
torn. I stop, uncertain, troubled and out of coun- 
tenance before this man, in the pose of a Buddha, 
whom I have just disturbed from his meditation 
on Nirvana. My letter of introduction from Ben- 



DAWN ON THE HIMALAYA 187 

ares trembles in my hand ; I am in half a mind to 
take myself off. How is that dreamer there going 
to receive me? Has he even seen me? 

Apparently not; but without looking at me he 
motions me to approach. The interview begins at 
once through the translations of my interpreter. 
The hermit's voice is a little dull, broken by age, 
but still soft and harmonious. I learn about his 
manner of life, his vow and why, by a hermitical 
refinement worthy both of Saint Benedict and Si- 
mon Stylites, he voluntarily surrounds his ancient 
throne with manure and offal, which he is obliged 
to cross each time he comes to sit there. A punish- 
ment for his past life of debauchery and tyranny? 
Or the symbol of the compromise, the baseness 
and villainy which generally constitute the ap- 
proach to power and its preservation ? Just which, 
I have difficulty in making out from my guide's 
jargon. The hermit has taken my letter of intro- 
duction and looked it over, without speaking, with 
his dead eyes, already filled with the Beyond and 
clouded with ecstasy. 

Then, regretfully shaking off his hypnosis, he 
says to me : "So there are those among the f eringhis 
of the West who wish to instruct themselves in our 
doctrine?" 

I reply to the Parahamsa that in Europe there 



i88 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

are numerous disciples of Vivekananda, of Annie 
Besant, and that Paris, as well as London and 
Madras, has its theosophical lodge; I speak to him 
of the Blue Lotus of Madame Blavatsky. All this 
is not unknown to him. These names and these 
associations are not unfamiliar to him, thanks to 
his reading and his reflections in former times 
when he used to reign, when he commanded a 
people, courtiers, armies. Today these recollec- 
tions are only an echo in his weakened memory. 
And he rejoices in his own downfall: 

"Thou seest here, O stranger, a man who, de- 
spoiled of his kingdom and his riches, glories in 
this supreme joy, the only true one which this in- 
carnation has afforded him. As a king I learned 
to know men; they are all falsehood, deceit and 
treachery. I myself who speak to thee, I have 
been, I still am, the vilest among them. I wished 
to enslave my subjects. The oppressor has pun- 
ished me for it. I have seen my wives and sons 
murdered, my palace burned, my treasures con- 
fiscated, my titles abolished. But why should I 
complain against this just punishment of my sins? 
... I am conscious of a former state in which I 
was even baser and more miserable. The pro- 
gression announced by the master is therefore on 
the way to realization. The Gautama has said it: 



DAWN ON THE HIMALAYA 189 

'Nothing that is to happen will happen before its 
appointed hour.' It is the sage's part to be patient 
and to await his next and more perfect evolution. 
Why should the ambitious and stupid man desire 
obstinately to hasten this change, scorning the 
usual term?" 

I look at this strange old man. He frightens me 
a little with that calm air of his, like a living idol. 
And as I bid him farewell, bowing respectfully, 
as before one of the highest personages whom I 
have encountered in this country, I hear him mur- 
muring softly the ritualistic invocation of the pil- 
grims to the Ganges: ''Om Brahma kripa'i kevo- 
lom," "O Brahma, may thy will alone be done!" 

In this fashion, the Grand Lama of the Thibet- 
ans must pray at Lhassa. 



PART IV 



CHAPTER XIX 



HYDERABAD AND GOLCONDA 




Albert Besnard and UHomme en Rose — First annoyances — ^An 
indiscreet nurse — Strolling near the Char-Minar — His 
Highness, the Nizam, has me arrested — The incident 
closed — A nightingale worth 7,000 rupees — The ruins of 
Golconda — Yesterday and Today. 

lYDERABAD is the land of the 
Thousand and One Nights! 

All my impressions can be 
summed up in this one exclamation 
of admiration. No city in India, 
unless it is Jeypore, possesses so 
much Asiatic splendor and local color; and I un- 
derstand why my illustrious friend Albert Besnard 
has stayed here so long. Was it not here, for that 
matter, that we met? Captivated, both of us, by the 
fabulous and legendary side of this city, we have 
drawn from it our own respective observations. 
He, the marvelous artist, has caught on his pallet, 
and also in that living book of his, so full of color, 
UHomme en Rose, the highly Oriental strange- 

193 



194 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

ness of "this field of gaily-colored turbans." I, in 
my more modest sphere of writer, have been con- 
tent to jot down in my traveler's note-book the 
coming and going of this multi-colored crowd, the 
extraordinary procession of these princes, these 
imans, these fakirs, the sing-song supplications of 
these beggars, the sly winking of these bearded 
merchants, squatting at the back of their shops, like 
hairy spiders in search of prey. How much per- 
sonality has this tradition-loving people, so far 
removed from our Europe! What atmosphere! 
I am positively impregnated with it, gripped by it, 
denationalized. 

A Dutch Catholic missionary, whose acquaint- 
ance I make in the train, between the stations of 
Ra'ichur and Wadi, warns me of the astonishment 
I shall feel on entering the States of the Nizam, as 
they call the sovereign of the Dckkan who reigns 
over twelve millions of subjects, most of them Mo- 
hammedans. This virtual unanimity of religious 
belief, according to the reverend father, does not 
prevent the authorities from showing an extremely 
liberal attitude towards the Christians and the 
Hindus. To support his statement, the good mis- 
sionary shows me in his portfolio a special permit 
from the sultan's high police, dispensing him from 
all administrative annoyance, and at the same time 



HYDERABAD AND GOLCONDA 195 

a permanent free pass to travel first class on all the 
railways of that region. "The English," he adds 
in this connection, "also prove by this that on their 
side they honor and favor, without distinction, all 
the sowers of the good word and propagandists 
of civilization." It is unnecessary to add that they 
are repaid for it. I shall always remember the 
enthusiastic way in which the Dutch priest ex- 
tolled to me the benefits of the English occupation 
of Central India, and especially how he praised 
the English canal of Bezwada, to which all the 
surrounding plains owe their present fertility. 

I reach Hyderabad at about seven in the eve- 
ning. Why am I not a missionary! A caviling, 
indiscreet, inquisitorial policeman questions me as 
I leave the train: "Where do you come from? 
Who are you? What are you doing? Where are 
you going? Why are you traveling? Is it on 
business or for pleasure?" All this respectfully, 
of course, but with such persistency as to make 
one's hair rise. They make me pass a second sani- 
tary examination at the station; they change my 
first plague-passport for another, more detailed, if 
such a thing is possible. And yet I come from 
Bangalore, an exceptionally healthy city! I shake 
with indignation, I protest, I call down the aveng- 
ing thunders of my consul. All my French trepi- 



196 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

dation brings only one result, an amused smile on 
the lips of my obsequious questioners. For a 
crowning insult, they tell me that I must go day 
after tomorrow to the Civil Hospital and have 
myself examined by a nurse appointed for this 
duty. ... If I decide to remain at Hyderabad 
for ten days, I shall have the advantage of being 
examined only every other day. What luck for 
me! 

OufI I have just been before this new-fash- 
ioned examining board. The nurse, a half-breed 
blackamoor, has contented herself with examining 
my face, hands, arms and chest, fortunately not 
going further. And now, my baggage installed at 
the Secunderabad Hotel, I relax my mind by mak- 
ing a little trip through the town, accompanied by 
my boy. I adore these aimless strolls about the 
little streets and bazaars; I have generally ob- 
served that this is the best way to glean observa- 
tions of all sorts. We therefore set off on foot, 
without the least ostentation, across the bridge of 
the river Musi, which one might walk over, the 
drought has so dried it up. Then we pass through 
the wall of forts built in 1555 by the king of Gol- 
conda, Mohammed Kuli. Along the river bank 
they have built levees and permanent barricades 
because of the frequent inundations. Do not laugh 



111. :T|T|jp-- 


#< 


pp:,-^-.^T--{l Ji 


jr* 



A STREET IN" HYDERABAD 




RUINS AT GOLCONDA 




H. H. PRINCE AGA-KHAN, RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL HEAD OF THE 
MUSSULMANS OF INDIA 



HYDERABAD AND GOLCONDA 197 

at the paradox! They are still speaking of the 
ravages of the last flood of 1908. 

We make our way toward the Char-Minar, a 
majestic building of white rough-stone, flanked by 
four minarets. They still call it the Fish's Gate, 
undoubtedly because a gigantic wooden carp, 
wrapped in red muslin, swings there. At its en- 
trance are lines of blind men, each led by a sharp- 
eyed child, who with indistinct, voluble voices, 
chant their complaint like an anthem to the crowd. 
Turbaned horsemen, mounted on frisky little long- 
tailed horses, pass and repass along the highway. 
I am struck by the appearance of these horsemen, 
some of them armed with Arab guns, others with 
yatagans and kandjars, a perquisite which, as with 
our Corsicans, has been granted them from time 
immemorial. I follow the highway mechanically, 
interested in all that surrounds me. The further 
I advance, the more congested becomes the traffic. 
My boy explains that today happens to be a great 
Mohammedan festival and that the people are 
coming to render homage to His Highness, the 
Nizam. We advance with great difficulty, and 
soon we are under the very windows of the zenana 
where, from behind the dirty screens of yellow 
grass, the monarch's hundreds of wives are mo- 
tionlessly watching the ebb and flow of the crowd. 



198 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

A remark here. I am always infinitely respect- 
ful of the customs and religious ceremonies of the 
countries I visit, modeling myself in this on the 
English, who are thoroughly tolerant rulers. But 
truly I did not think I was committing a sacrilege 
in mingling innocently with the prince's subjects. 
Just then, however, my glance fell on the balcony 
where the sultan stood. Was it because, untidily 
dressed as he was, badly shaved, with his hair in 
disorder and his black garments covered with 
spots, the Nizam, who was surrounded by his little 
Crown Prince, four years old, and two half-breed 
nurses, was ashamed to be surprised in such a state 
by a European? Or was he suddenly seized with 
an irrational hatred of foreigners? However that 
may be, this potentate — one of the most powerful, 
and above all one of the richest in India, possessing 
an income of no less than seventy-five millions — 
made me a sign with his hand to retire. Very 
much astonished, I did not comply with his com- 
mand but contented myself with saluting him re- 
spectfully. He then repeated his gesture with 
more impatience and irritation, this time covering 
his head with his dastar, a miter of yellow silk 
somewhat recalling the bonnet of the Venetian 
doge. At this moment I felt myself violently 
seized by policemen armed to the teeth, who 



HYDERABAD AND GOLCONDA 199 

hustled and dragged me ofif in spite of my protes- 
tations. In vain did I allege my good faith, my 
pacific intentions; in vain did I produce from my 
pocket-book the vice-regal recommendation which 
had been delivered to me in Calcutta. It was of 
no use and, moreover, the fanatical crowd 
swarmed around me and threatened to do me 
harm. Then my boy exhorted me to prudence in 
this independent State where the English control 
is insufficiently exercised; and I retraced my steps, 
outraged at this uncivil and summary incident. 

The next day, of course, I complained vehe- 
mently before the British Comrnissioner of the dis- 
courteous treatment to which, without the least 
appearance of provocation on my part, I had been 
subjected. Everything leads me to believe that the 
Resident's rebuke had a good effect, for two hours 
later an aide-de-camp of His Highness came to 
explain to me in ludicrous terms that there had 
been a misunderstanding on my part, that his 
Master, in inviting me to withdraw, had had only 
the idea of preserving me from jostling or event- 
ual ill-treatment by his subjects. His High- 
ness, he assured me, deeply regretted the incident. 
He offered me his carriages, his automobiles and 
even one of his chamberlains as a guide to palliate 
the first bad impression. I received these excuses 



200 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

coldly and declined the offers of the intermediary, 
adding that as a guest who had been magnificently 
received by the Maharajahs of Kapurthala, Jey- 
pore, Gwalior, Cooch-Behar, etc., I could expect 
nothing more from the princely hospitality of In- 
dia. I have never known — or cared, for that mat- 
ter — whether or not this little well-merited lesson 
bore its fruit. 

In regard to this same potentate, here is a typi- 
cal anecdote which I shall give in its entirety. 

One d^y when he was walking in the streets, 
without ceremony, with his little son, the Crown 
Prince, he noticed a small boy who held on his 
fist, as is the fashion in Hyderabad, a red-tailed 
nightingale, fastened by a string to his foot. On 
hearing the impassioned trills of the bird vir- 
tuoso, the royal child was deeply stirred. 

"I wish I could have it!" he murmured in ec- 
stasy, his hands clasped. 

"Very well," said the Nizam. And, addressing 
one of his officers, "Go," he said, "buy me that 
nightingale for 700 rupees." 

"Seven hundred rupees!" exclaimed the courtier. 
"But Your Highness can get it without difficulty 
for 700 annas!" 

"Ah, is that sol" returned the sovereign, frown- 



HYDERABAD AND GOLCONDA 201 

ing. "Indeed! But this time I wish to pay 7,000 
rupees. Go, bring me the bird and a receipt." 

Ostentatious, omnipotent, capricious — and bar- 
baric, a good many of them are still like thatl 

For the rest, as this man has died since my trip 
through his States, peace to his ashes I 

The next day is the great Mohammedan feast of 
Moharram: three hundred elephants, a hundred 
and twenty camels, caparisoned in scarlet, more 
than a thousand horses and mules, their brows 
covered with masks that give their noses the ap- 
pearance of beaks, pass in a procession under the 
Char-Minar and along the great arteries of the 
city. A regular army which I estimate at approxi- 
mately thirty thousand men files past the palace 
of the sultan, preceded by its standards and music; 
mercenary battalions of Arab infantry from Hed- 
jaz follow it. The guns thunder, the rifles crack, 
the people shout. Standing up on the coachman's 
seat in my carriage, so that I may look down on 
the yelling, stamping crowd, I take many snap- 
shots. Oh! the harmonious and intensely Oriental 
mixture of all these colored stuffs, agitated by a 
pious delirium I And what a variety of shades in 
these turbans and head-dresses that range from 
purple to crimson and amaranth, from lilac to dark 
violet, from ocher to sulphur and saffron, from 



202 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

green-blue to olive-green, from beige to sepia and 
chestnut, from royal blue to dull turquoise! . . . 
"Out of the way!" the j^w-runners cry, shaking 
their fly-chasers before a closed coach. Through 
the gaping shutters, I distinguish a white cloak 
falling over a sari of salmon brocade. It is a 
woman, a woman of the nobility, a princess no 
doubt. My coachman pulls his horses to one side: 
"Prime Minister's lady, Sir!" He has recognized 
the livery. The carriage passes and I breathe for a 
moment the faint perfume of amber and benjamin. 
Was she beautiful perhaps? Ah! who can express 
the tormenting secrecy of these veils! And the 
enigmatic smile which hides behind them! And 
the harmonious flight of these draperies, many- 
colored or even uniformly white, which mold, 
perhaps, the body of an antique goddess, the finely 
arched form of a pre-Homeric virgin! 

This mirage of Asia is still in my eyes two days 
later when I let my dreamy glance wander over 
what remains today of enchanting Golconda. This 
mirage peoples with life, in my eyes, the streets, 
palaces, mosques, harems, baths and bazaars of 
the City of Diamonds, which has now become the 
City of Silence. 

Before arriving at the august ruins, I have 
skirted, in company with a student, the steep bank 



HYDERABAD AND GOLCONDA 203 

of a fish-pond which bears the pretty name of Mir- 
Allam. Here of old the royal wives and courte- 
sans came to go sailing on a galley with sails of 
stretched silk; no indiscreet glance could reach 
these sumptuous captives. Only the thin, nasal 
song of the eunuchs scanned, to the sound of the 
vina, the sister of our guitar, the cadenced breath- 
ing of the rowers. A twilight of dream has fallen 
over weary Golconda, whose interminable, cren- 
elated encircling walls seemed to serve as a sup- 
port to the galloping hordes of nocturnal clouds, 
amid which the first stars were beginning to shine. 
Before me stretches the gray, dusty road, kept 
in order here and there by a gang of women of 
the district. And soon here I am before the gates 
of the first circular rampart which once measured 
seventeen kilometers. They are covered with iron, 
these gates, and also studded with sharp points, to 
prevent the war elephants from shaking them with 
blows of their tusks or from rubbing their backs 
against them for sport. The Nizam, I am assured, 
provides for their upkeep, as well as for the re- 
pairs to the second, enclosing wall, within which 
fabulous treasures may still be heaped up, pell- 
mell, in ingenious and unknown hiding-places. In 
the court separating this first wall from the second 
there are heaps of stone and cast-iron cannon balls, 



204 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

arms of all sorts and also machines for a siege that 
recall the ballisttB, the battering-rams and the cat- 
apults of heroic Troy. There are endless stairs 
and steps, a second iron-covered door, at a turn- 
ing, then an inclined plane by which I reach Gol- 
conda proper. 

What devastation! Aurengzeb the Mogul has 
passed here. . . . There is no harmony of bright 
colors to spread their warmth over this sad gray- 
ness. It would fill a painter with consternation 
and ravish an architect. For these speaking ruins 
have preserved their ancient style, still uplifting 
their delicate profiles among the enormous blocks 
of gray granite, as irregular as those of the ruins 
of Apremont and Franchard. One's foot stumbles 
and slips over the debris: cracked cisterns, circu- 
lar roads overgrown with brambles, crumbling 
underground vaults, gaping oubliettes, mosques 
tottering on their foundations. A high wind might 
knock it all down. Nothing is left of its grandeur 
and power but a memory, clinging to a few cracked 
and falling stones. 

But how beautiful it is ! Majestically and tragi- 
cally beautiful! Beautiful as the loved face of a 
dead grandmother! The same serenity, the same 
self-communion, the same peace. . . . 




HHmr Vfmfffi 




Pv ' 


m 




■jtrr. .« U..I w. .1 JilWL 


.",1 



TANJORE — THE GREAT PAGODA OF THE BLACK BULL 




TANJORE — THE TEMPLE OF SOBRAMANYE 



HYDERABAD AND GOLCONDA 205 

In the distance is the stir and noise of Hydera- 
bad, all white, with its perpetual holiday air. 

Yesterday — which is no more — feels mounting 
close to it the living Today. 



CHAPTER XX 




TO THE MEMORY OF DUPLEIX 

Pondichery and the Adrian Bonhoure project — A few words 
about the Tamil race — Remnants of the past — We go as 
far as Villianur — The dancing-girl trick — Madras, a 
mirage of Europe. 

F the magnificent heritage of Du- 
pleix, Bussy, Mahe de la Bourdon- 
nais and Lally-ToUendal, there re- 
mains to us today only a modest, a 
sort of honorific legacy the import- 
ance of which, economically speak- 
ing, is, except for Pondichery, almost nil. 

England, even if it is in a friendly fashion, hems 
in our settlements. Our scattered possessions, such 
as Yanaon, Karikal, Mahe, Chandernagor, the 
quarter in Dacca and other enclosed territories 
have no connection with one another. The ter- 
ritory of Pondichery alone is held entirely or al- 
most entirely under one control. One of our most 
distinguished colonial administrators, M. Adrian 

Bonhoure — who presided so happily over the de- 

206 



TO THE MEMORY OF DUPLEIX 207 

velopment of New Caledonia, then of Tahiti and 
its dependencies, finally of Djibouti, our flourish- 
ing Somali sea-coast — conceived in 1909, when he 
was Governor of French India, a vast and beauti- 
ful project the aim of which was the enlargement 
and unification of our domain of Pondichery by 
means of the reconveyance to the English of our 
settlements of Chandernagor, Mahe, Karikal and 
Yanaon. It was an essentially practical plan, since 
it permitted the French colonial effort, instead of 
dissipating itself sterilely, to be directed effica- 
ciously to a single outlet, benefiting at once by one 
port and one railway system. The enclosed terri- 
tories, a perpetual cause of disagreement and liti- 
gation, would disappear. We should gain for our 
business a unity of plan and a celerity in realizing 
it. Our neighbors across the channel, after a few 
formalities, seemed well-disposed towards this 
friendly arrangement. It was from France that 
the obstruction came, from France where our un- 
lucky and quite national ignorance of geographi- 
cal and colonial questions prevented us from 
grasping the utilitarian import of such a trans- 
action. The chauvinistic press was roused ; it cried 
haro on those impious souls who proposed to sell 
Chandernagor at auction, alleging that this would 
be to attack the History of France, to profane the 



2o8 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

memory of Dupleix, to disfigure his work . . . 
such were the headlines of the sensational front- 
page articles. At once a movement formed itself 
in favor of the statu quo. Parliament itself judged 
the suggestion inopportune, even questionable. 
And the affair was closed, to the great joy of cer- 
tain functionaries and electors whom the reform 
would probably have injured. Therefore, M. 
Adrian Bonhoure, broken-hearted, had to put his 
plan away among his papers. Oh, heedless met- 
ropolitanism ! Oh, centralization!^ 

There are two ways of reaching Pondichery, by 
sea, on board the Messageries Maritimes, from 
Colombo or Calcutta, by land, by taking the great 
English line which unites Tuticorin to Madras, 
changing at the branch station of Villupuram. It 
was by this latter method of transportation that I 
reached the capital of our French settlements in 
India. This territory of Pondichery has belonged 
to us since 1872. The city was founded two years 
later by Francois Martin. Its area can be esti- 
mated at about 29,145 hectares, of which 2,004 ^^^ 

*As this work is appearing, we have reason to believe that, on the 

enlightened initiative of M. Albert Sarraut, Deputy from Aude 

who was twice the eminent Governor-General of our Indo-China and 
contributed so powerfully to its present prosperity — this Minister for 
the Colonies has resumed the study of this project, awaiting the op- 
portunity to carry it out as after-the-war circumstances, colonial and 
diplomatic, may permit. 



TO THE MEMORY OF DUPLEIX 209 

wooded, 9,707 uncultivated land, and the rest con- 
sists of rice and other plantations. 

The principal resources are rice, indigo, 
copra, tapioca, earth-nuts, betel, poppies, etc. 
Several sorts of cotton cloth are manufactured 
there, and the most highly esteemed are dyed blue. 
I must mention in passing the great spinning mill 
at Savannah which employs more than 2,000 
workers. As for a few details about the inhabi- 
tants: the Pondicherians are deeply bronzed and 
of the Dravidian race. The men, who are darker 
skinned than the Cingalese, are very scantily clad : 
on the head a sort of turban, about the loins a piece 
of white muslin. And that is all! I hasten to add 
that the women's costume is slightly less rudi- 
mentary: a little short vest confines their breasts, 
leaving bare the arms and the abdomen ; a waist- 
cloth falls from the hips to the knees. Their walk 
is plastic and one cannot but admire the outline 
and the movement of their shoulders and their 
arms as they balance great vessels of shining cop- 
per on their heads. With one's eyes shut, in the 
middle of the night, in the darkest street, one 
would immediately know the Tamil woman sim- 
ply by the clinking of her ornaments, her neck- 
laces, bracelets and rings which, covering her from 
head to foot, make her sound like an Andalusian 



2IO MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

mule. Like many other Indian women, she wears 
a little gold button ornamented with pearls 
screwed into the nostril, or, more often, a large 
ring of gold or silver wire at the partition of the 
nose. Widows, on the other hand, are entirely 
without trinkets and have their heads shaved. 

From the station, which is in British territory 
and on which the name is written in the English 
style, Pondicherry — I make my way, in a four- 
wheeled rickshaw, to the Southern Quarter to pay 
my first homage as a newly arrived Frenchman 
to the statue of Dupleix. Our glorious compatriot, 
whose name ought to remain engraved imperish- 
ably on our hearts by the side of Montcalm's, is 
represented with his hand on the hilt of his sword, 
bare-headed, his eyes fixed on the waves that come 
to die on the strand. The pedestal and the eight 
rostral columns that surround it were brought 
from the now ruined temple of Gingi. I admire 
the fine sculptures, very Indian in manner and 
harmonious as a whole. Opposite, a boom serves 
as a landing-bridge; a double rail transports to it 
the merchandise brought by the chelingues, a sort 
of canoe with eight or ten rowers. A few steps 
from the statue, on a large square, rises a little 
pavilion or rather a fountain, and the palace of 
the governor, the fiat roof and European pillars of 



TO THE MEMORY OF DUPLE IX 211 

which, in the style of the Bourse or the Madeleine, 
are a little out of place in the midst of this exotic 
scenery. How greatly I prefer the cathedral of 
the foreign missions with its Jesuit or Rococo 
architecture, which clearly belongs to its own 
eighteenth century, and the little white provincial 
houses of the Rue Royale, the Rue Dupleix, the 
Rue St. Louis and the Rue Quay de la Ville 
Blanche! 

I see them slipping past, one after another, those 
low dwellings, whitened with chalk, in the inte- 
riors of which one not infrequently perceives a 
Louis XV pier-glass or a parquet floor of lozenged 
oak. In this setting, a little affected and man- 
nered, once danced perhaps the red-heeled gallants 
and the furbelowed marquises of whom that 
strange Jeanne de Castro, otherwise Madame 
Dupleix, was the vicereine. Today the occupants 
of those pretty little houses are only Creoles who 
have emigrated from Mauritius or Bourbon Island 
when they are not, quite simply, half-breed Eura- 
sians, and dirty, at that. The days follow one 
another. . . . 

I am thinking of all this, in a melancholy way, 
while two men push and one pulls me in a little 
Pondicherian vehicle towards the Pagoda of Vil- 
lianur, situated a few miles distant in the French 



212 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

enclosure. I use this word "enclosure" intention- 
ally, for we had to make no less than five or six 
successive passages over territory that was alter- 
nately French and English in order to reach this 
temple. One can form some idea from this of the 
iiicessant difficulties that the respective neighbor- 
ing proprietors of these frontier domains experi- 
ence. Traveling at the rate of about two kilo- 
meters an hour, the two men pushing behind and 
the one who is pulling in front contrive to stream 
with sweat; their bronzed faces turn toward me at 
times and interrogate me with good-natured, lazy 
smiles. Is it really absolutely necessary that I 
should go as far as the pagoda? The truth is that, 
in my inmost heart, I feel somewhat shame-faced, 
lounging all by myself in this little four-wheeled 
cart, surmounted by a parasol; I look like an in- 
valid in a merry mood. But how can I do other- 
wise? It is the only practicable method of loco- 
motion in Pondichery. (What a world of comfort 
and speed separates these grating, jolting arm- 
chairs on wheels from the flexible, delicious rick- 
shaws, with their pneumatic tires, of Saigon!) 

The first persons we pass on the road are a squad 
of French Sepoys, quite military in their bearing. 
Some of them, seeing me crammed into the corner 
of my little wagon, have a mocking smile in the 



TO THE MEMORY OF DUPLEIX 213 

corner of their lips. What can you expect? They 
are voters like myself and from universal suffrage, 
especially in a colonial land, we can ask nothing 
but strict equality, however familiar and contemp- 
tuous. In the fields the peasants are busy with 
their picoites, by means of which they draw water 
from the wells — a sort of see-saw, like those which 
we observe every day in the outskirts of Cairo 
and which they set in motion by walking from one 
end to the other of the tilting beam. Finally, after 
having crossed or skirted a maze of canals shaded 
by palm-trees, as pleasing in their appearance as 
those I admired yesterday at Coudepacom, we 
reach the famous pagoda. 

These six kilometers have seemed interminable 
to me; and my first care, on arriving at the vil- 
lage, over which floats our national flag, is to de- 
mand with hue and cry a cool, sparkling soda, 
lightly colored with whisky. My men, more sober, 
content themselves with cocoanut milk. An old 
Brahman then approaches me and in an evil 
Anglo-French jargon whispers to me some indis- 
tinct and mysterious sentences: "Yes, master, moi 
connaise belle danseuse . . . three rupees only 
. . . tres attractif toi verras!" 

I know this dancing-girl trick of his ; it has al- 



214 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

ready been played on me several times. It is a 
classic trick of the indigenous artful dodger who 
dresses his daughter up in tinsel, covers her with 
bells and sets her jigging before the blissful Euro- 
pean. I leave this worthy discomfited and make 
my way to the sacred pond, on the bank of which 
I sit down. Before me there is a little pagoda 
surrounded by water, behind which are outlined 
in the background pyramidal gopuras. It is all, 
I must confess, very like what I have already seen 
elsewhere, but a chauvinistic pride seizes me be- 
cause this temple is ours, the last vestige of our 
dominion in this country which is so firmly at- 
tached to the Brahmanistic dogmas. Besides, this 
little pagoda of Villianur is one of the prettiest 
things, architecturally speaking, in which our 
French eyes can take pride. I have not found its 
equal either in Mahe or in Chandernagor. On 
this score alone did I not owe it the honor of a 
visit? 

I return to my rickshaw and find the old im- 
presario there chanting his couplet to me again: 
"Yes, master, toi jamais vue si beautiful bayadere 
. . . moiy en a, f aire danser lotus, cobra, peacock." 

I fling him a handful of annas, for the probable 
cost of the disguise, and I hear him murmuring to 



TO THE MEMORY OF DUPLEIX 215 

my astonished boy, "That's a Parisian. ... I 
knowl" 

And now, since this morning and for a few 
hours, here I am at Madras. Madras — that is to 
say, a sudden return to the things of Europe which 
— with no offense to lovers of local color — also 
have their good side. Who, in fact, can describe 
the Edenlike charm of a good bath in a bath-tub 
after the too truly tublike tub of India! And the 
delight of a drive in a real carriage along a clean, 
level highway, without bumps or ruts! And the 
sybaritic consumption in the "tea-room" of well- 
buttered toast and muffins! 

Is not Madras, after Calcutta and Bombay, the 
largest city of British India? As the capital of 
the presidency of the same name and the residence 
of the governor, it has never ceased to be the seat 
of the government and of a Court of Appeals and 
numbers today nearly half a million inhabitants. 
Its surface is so spread out that every cottage has 
its little garden, and many vast dwellings and pal- 
aces are surrounded by a park. This privileged 
situation (which reminds me somewhat of Wel- 
tevreden, the elegant quarter of Batavia) permits 
everyone, without leaving his home and in the 
very center of the city, to imagine himself in the 



2i6 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

country and to have all its pleasures. Quick 1 be- 
fore dinner at the "D'Angelis," a short ride in a 
victoria about the city! Am I in India? Impos- 
ing modern monuments follow one another like 
stepping-stones along the beach on a strip of earth 
twenty kilometers by twelve in length: the Col- 
lege, the High Court of Justice, which is crowned 
by the lighthouse, the Museum of Art and Com- 
merce. Other buildings, like the Shepauk Build- 
ing, the former residence of the nawabs of the Car- 
natic, are visibly inspired by the Doric, Ionic, and 
Saracen orders and, like the Theosophical Lodge 
and the School of Arts, also attract my attention. 
One must not fail to visit this School of Arts, for 
in it one can see the natives revealing all their 
aptitude for ceramics, engraving on metals, beaten 
copper work, sculpture, painting, enameling, etc. 
. . . Afterwards I go to Fort St. George, where 
one finds the first English church built in India 
(1678- 1 680), not far from the black city and the 
bazaars, then to the People's Park and the Botan- 
ical Gardens, where splendid tigers are roaring. 
And, without my giving him any order, as if 
mechanically, the irreproachable driver of my 
comfortable victoria takes me along the boulevard 
of the Ramina Road, on which the British and 
Tamil elegance of Madras is accustomed to gather 




MADURA — THE PALACE OF THE ANCIENT RAJAH WHO WAS 
DISPOSSESSED 




THE SACRED ROCK OF TRICHINOPOLY 



TO THE MEMORY OF DUPLEIX 217 

each evening to enjoy the cool of the day and the 
music while they consume ices and sherbets. 

This Marina Road, why, it's the Promenade des 
Anglais at Nice, it's the jetty at Ostend! 

I pinch my elbow to see if I am really 
awake 1 . . . 



CHAPTER XXI 




CJUUUU UUUUUU 19 1 



THE TEMPLES OF COROMANDEL 

Tanjore and its bull of black marble — ^The jewel of Sobraman)re 
— Bad taste of native royalty — ^The sacred rock of 
Trichinopoly — Sri-Ragham and its 20,000 Brahmans. 

N leaving Madras to go to Tanjore 
and then to Trichinopoly, the city 
of the monolith, one is struck by 
the exuberance of the tropical vege- 
tation. Everywhere are clumps 
of cabbage palms, cocoanut trees, 
bananas, cut here and there by masses of violet 
bougainvilliers and purple hibiscus. All this ver- 
dure sways and undulates above immense green 
rice-fields. A smiling, enchanting country, if 
there ever was onel 

Several architects, English as well as French, 
who had journeyed to India before me, had espe- 
cially recommended to my attention the Temple of 
Tanjore as ofifering, with those of Madura and 
Sri-Ragham, the most perfect examples of the 
Dravidian style. ''That of Tanjore, above all," 

2I8 



THE TEMPLES OF COROMANDEL 219 

they told me, "has the merit of not too greatly 
shocking our European aesthetic conceptions. It 
cannot fail to charm you; it is a masterpiece, an 
adorable masterpiece, consecrated to the glory of 
Sobramanye and giving the impression of a piece 
of jewelry, artistically worked out to the last 
detail." 

To find my way there I pass, as soon as I have 
arrived, through the big and little forts of the 
ancient citadel ; by means of shaking old draw- 
bridges, I cross deep moats close against the 
crenelated encircling wall. Then suddenly I find 
myself in an immense paved court. Here rises the 
great pagoda, the gopura of which, covered with 
symbolic figures, is more than two hundred feet 
high and has thirteen tiers crowned with a mono- 
lithic dome. A few feet away rises the colossal 
reclining bull of black marble (representing Siva) 
which is called Nandy and measures not less than 
thirteen feet in height. It is surrounded by a rail- 
ing to the bars of which the faithful are accus- 
tomed to fasten gifts and votive ofiferings. Above 
my head, the vault of the pavilion which shelters 
the idol is decorated with many-colored frescoes 
of the most striking effect. 

I advance a hundred feet to the right of the 
square, towards the jewel of Sobramanye, which 



220 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

attracts and fascinates me. And slowly, as one 
tastes an old Roman portal or a Gothic rose-win- 
dow, I make the tour of the building and pick out 
its beauties, one by one. They are exquisite, these 
somber sculptures which, owing to their lightness, 
one might easly mistake for wood-carvings! On 
the other hand there is nothing very striking to be 
noted in the interior in which reigns a mysterious 
obscurity and which one reaches by a flight of 
steps, bordered on each side by a finely carved but 
massive balustrade of stone. But the chief char- 
acteristic of this little monument, that which most 
particularly arouses one's admiration, is the purity 
of line of the general plan, the regularity and soli- 
darity of the courses and the basements; finally, 
the almost Greek simplicity shown by the work- 
men who cut these rigorously cylindrical pillars, 
which one would swear were inspired* by those of 
the Theseion at Athens. 

Strange that a people who created such admir- 
able masterpieces should have degenerated in our 
day to the point of ignoring, almost disliking them, 
and in any case of preferring to them such somber 
horrors as, for example, the so-called "palace" of 
the deposed ex-Rajah of Tanjore, whose descend- 
ants are today pensioned by England! Certainly 
I should not care to share the enthusiasm of my 



THE TEMPLES OF COROMANDEL 221 

good boy, Subbaraya-Pillai, for that large and in- 
significant white building which was shown to us 
by a ragged guardian. I had to hold myself in 
so as not to burst out laughing at the incoherent 
decorations of the rooms, the bad taste of this petty 
provincial establishment, the ridiculous portraits 
of the sovereigns, smeared on by some wretched 
dauber, the treasures (worthy of the boutique a 
treize!) of the present Ranee, who is more than 
seventy years of age, and the modern lusters, dusty, 
heavy, absurd, unquestionably imported from 
Diisseldorf or Leipzig. 

Poor naive kinglets! 

And, dreaming, I invoke the splendor of the 
vanished ages, the great ancestors of these folk 
who raised those holy stones to the glory of their 
gods, the sublime builders of the pagoda and the 
little temple. In the street, just now, a Moham- 
medan procession winds past to the sound of a 
barbaric and yet harmonious music; the crowd 
makes way before the trophies, the standards, the 
fifes and the madly beating tom-toms ; the acolytes 
of the priests throw ashes over the bent heads; 
three elephants, two camels, richly caparisoned 
horses led by the hands of the Sepoys, close the 
march. This stately procession makes its way 
toward a pond of stagnant water, where sterile 



222 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

women come to bathe, the banks of which are peo- 
pled with monkeys. 

The sun sinks slowly over a vision of what must 
once have been the splendor of the kings of Tan- 
jore, a splendor that today is fallen forever. 

Of Trichinopoly, a large city of 91,000 inhabi- 
tants, watered by the Cauvery, there is nothing 
very much to be said. The interest of the visit 
lies exclusively in the ascent of an enormous rock, 
236 feet high, on the flat top of which rises a fort 
and a temple dedicated^ to Siva. One reaches it 
by a stairway of about three hundred steps cut in 
the solid rock and skirting a line of little chapels 
generally consecrated to the worship of Vishnu. 
From the terrace one looks down over a magical 
view : from the foot of the rock rises the long mur- 
mur of the town, the river stretches out its silver 
moire ribbon, the palm forest undulates in the 
little shivers of the wind. Bells, ringing, scatter 
their pious notes on the air; it is the brass clappers 
of Saint Joseph's College, which is directed by the 
French Jesuit fathers, calling the students to 
prayer. The history of India tells us that in this 
city there took place, in the eighteenth century, 
memorable battles between Dupleix and our Eng- 
lish friends of today; it is not surprising, therefore, 



THE TEMPLES OF COROMANDEL 223 

that the French tourist should find there many a 
memory and vestige of the former inhabitants. 

Through the narrow streets of the lower city, 
where I jostle an incessant procession of carts 
drawn by zebus or little nervous horses, I drive 
to the temples of Sri-Ragham and Jambukeswar. 
The former, dedicated to Vishnu, is one of the 
most gigantic known; its outer encircling wall 
measures no less than 2,475 f^^^ by 2,880 and is 
twenty feet high ; seven successive enclosing walls, 
built in squares and separated by three hundred 
and fifty feet from each other, surround it with 
their massive battlements; the central enclosure, 
which is entered only by the officiating priests, 
contains relics; the total population of Brahmans 
and merchants who live in the interior of this 
sanctuary is estimated at more than 20,000 souls. 
From the architectural point of view, I note the 
first entrance, the superstructure of which is 
adorned with allegorical frescoes while the colon- 
nades seem inspired by the Doric style. Above 
the walls there soar into the air the twenty-one 
gopuras or pyramidal bell-towers, sculptured and 
carefully worked like the doors of a cathedral, 
with this difference, that the statues of the saints 
are replaced by monsters and divinities in fero- 
cious, gesticulating attitudes. But the marvel of 



224 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

marvels is undeniably the facade of rearing horses 
in high relief, upholding the massive entablature 
with their heads. The most phlegmatic European 
is struck dumb with admiration in the presence 
of these incomparable sculptures whose state of 
preservation is perfect. 

The pagoda of Jambukeswar ofifers a certain 
analogy with the great temple of Tanjore: there 
are the same richly sculptured gopuras, the same 
sacred ponds with greenish, stagnant water, which 
seem to be no longer used by the pilgrims for their 
ablutions. . . . But what especially characterizes 
this monument, which is dedicated to Siva, is the 
magnificent series of columns by which one ap- 
proaches the Holy of Holies, where a sacred ele- 
phant stands guard on the threshold. Near this 
emaciated pachyderm, my guide points out to me 
a fakir thug, of the sect of the Stranglers of the 
Nerbuddah, who has been rendered famous by his 
three unsuccessful attempts at suicide. While 
quite young, having submitted to the ordeal of the 
Virvir, of the Nirvanist P'aousigars, this Dandu- 
Baba had himself suspended over a brazier by an 
iron hook fastened into the flesh of his back. The 
muscles tore out and he fell, but only rolled on the 
burning coals. Later, at Benares, having fastened 
jars pierced with holes about his body, the fanatic 



THE TEMPLES OF COROMANDEL 225 

flung himself into the Ganges, which little by little 
immersed him. But he was pulled out in time 
by a fisherman. Finally, at Puri, on the coast of 
Orissa, he tried to get himself crushed beneath 
the car of Juggernaut. But the front wheels hav- 
ing become suddenly wedged, he got off with two 
crushed fingers. Since then he has resigned him- 
self to living . . . unless some day, when the 
sacred elephant has eaten too much, he decides to 
let his foot come down on him like a pestle I 



CHAPTER XXII 



THE HORRIFYING COAST OF MALABAR 

Some simple ethnographical remarks — With the French Ad- 
ministrator of Mahe — "Do you like sardines? They have 
put them everywhere" — The buffalo's agony — Cochin, the 
Indian Venice — ^A Court of Miracles — Nightmare visions 
— White and Black Jews — On board the "pirate" 
Gneisenau! 



12- 



DO not know why the classical itin- 
erary for the traveler in the South 
of India is generally limited to a 
visit to the coast of Coromandel, 
disdaining that of Malabar. 

Not that I wish to dispute the 
incontestable architectural superiority of the 
temples of the former to those of the latter, which 
hardly exist; but when one sets out to make the 
acquaintance of a country as many-sided, as va- 
ried, as full of marvels as the peninsula of Hindu- 
stan, it does not do to take as one's only objective 
the contemplation of sanctuaries and ancient royal 
dwellings; one must also pay attention to ethno- 
graphical problems, to the enthralling examination 

226 



THE COAST OF MALABAR 227 

of the distinctive characteristics of the races, to the 
study of curious customs, varying infinitely one 
from another. Take, for example, the case of the 
Moplas, a mixed race of the Arab-Dravidians, of 
the Mussulman faith, who appeared at the time 
of the Portuguese, especially during the great ex- 
peditions of Vasco de Gama, who wear that queer- 
looking turban and those high wooden sandals that 
recall the Japanese clogs. Later on I shall have 
occasion to speak also of the White Jews and the 
Black Jews of Cochin, no less interesting than the 
Topas, a mixed French, Portuguese and Indian 
product, settled in the region of Mahe and Cali- 
cut. One must see everything in India, or almost 
everything. . . . And in this remaining category 
I shall give first place to the coast of Malabar. 

From Erode to Calicut is an extremely pictur- 
esque trip; wooded mountains, rocks, ponds cov- 
ered with reeds and abounding in water-fowl, and 
above which soar the great fisher-eagles, with their 
brown plumage and white heads. The mountain- 
ous appearance of the country is a relief after the 
plains and rice-fields of Coromandel. But how 
many difficulties lie in the way of entering this 
unhealthy province, where cholera, bubonic 
plague and leprosy are endemic — strangely 
enough, since the land is well-aired and watered 



228 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

by large rivers, very much like those of the South 
of Ceylon. In order to be able to stop at Calicut, 
at Mahe, at Cochin, I was obliged to fortify my- 
self with a plague-passport, which certifies that I 
am not infected with any of the aforementioned 
maladies — a wise measure dictated by the authori- 
ties in the desire not to increase the scourge. 

After a short stop at Calicut (the native town 
of calico, dear to our housewives, where I hastily 
visit a cotton spinning-mill) I reach Mahe, our 
charming French possession on the Western coast. 

There I am received and treated in the most 
hospitable fashion by the Colonial Administrator, 
M. Louit, who is temporarily replacing M. Bar- 
bier, the Resident. Thanks to him I have the 
honor of occupying a beautiful room in the Resi- 
dent's palace, a historic chamber, if you please, 
in which Dupleix slept, then Mahe de la Bour- 
donnais. M. Louit takes me for a stroll over the 
ancient crenelated ramparts, now transformed into 
terraces and gardens, with an outlook over the 
sea and the estuary of the little river of Mahe. 
I could imagine myself on the Riviera, were it not 
for just that little river, shaded by cocoanut trees 
and quite Asiatic, which serves as a frontier for 
our enclosure. In fact a wooden bridge, owned 
jointly, separates — cordially, I may say — the 



THE COAST OF MALABAR 229 

French shore from the British shore. We visit the 
"native village," and its quarter inhabited by the 
half-breed Topas. I say native village, for it must 
not be imagined that there exists here a neighbor- 
ing little French or European quarter, such as 
there is at Pondichery. Like Chandernagor, Kari- 
kal and Yanaon, Mahe contains, one might say, 
no colonists. If in each of these settlements you 
count up the Administrator, the druggist, the mis- 
sionary and two or three good Sisters, you will 
obtain the total of the six or seven persons of our 
nationality. Oh I pardon me, I was forgetting 
Mahe's one French colonist, a certain M. de la 
Haye-Jousselin, a widower and something of a 
misanthrope, who directs an important sardine 
cannery on the English side of the river! This 
sardine industry — for the fish abound in these 
parts — ought to attract to Mahe more than one 
of our Bretons who are complaining of the disap- 
pearance of the precious fish at Douarnenez, 
Audierne and Concarneau. Real fortunes might 
be built up there in no time: the cost of labor is 
next to nothing and the oil of the earth-nuts, popu- 
larly called cacahouettes, is ready to one's hand. 
The only thing to be thought of is the soldering 
and the importation of boxes. I hope my appeal 
will be heard and understood, but in a somewhat 



230 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

more patriotic fashion than that of M. de la Haye- 
Jousselin, the French colonist who has established 
himself on Anglo-Saxon territory! 

And those sardines! There are vast quantities 
of them, too many! I made this discouraging dis- 
covery during the course of a dinner to which I 
was asked by the Administrator. The trouble was 
caused by the sardine heads, cut ofif and flung to 
the chickens and animals as food: creamed eggs, 
fricasseed chicken, roast duck au riz creole and 
with hearts of palm, yes, everything had the taste 
of this fish ! My host positively tore his hair. "It's 
frightful," he said to me; "shutting up my fowls 
in a carefully wired enclosure and making them 
fast for several days after I have bought them 
isn't of any use. Nothing does any good. I believe 
the air itself is sar dined!" 

We took coffee on the terrace, by moonlight. 
M. Louit extolled to me the resources of the little 
colony of eight thousand souls which he admin- 
isters. His native subjects, it appears, are very 
easy to live with. But that does not prevent the 
solitude from weighing on him. And there is a 
great deal of joy for him in the thought of the 
next stop of the cruiser Dupleix, which is to coal 
at Mahe in a week's time. The Dupleix at Mahel 
History is certainly nothing but repetitions. 



THE COAST OF MALABAR 231 

"Well, everything is doing nicely," the Admin- 
istrator said to me jovially, rubbing his hands; "at 
least for a while I shan't have to eat sardines all 
by myself!" 

But an end to joking. A horrifying, repulsive, 
pitiful spectacle awaits me at Cochin, the center 
of the plague, cholera, leprosy and elephantiasis. 

Cochin is situated on the point of a peninsula, 
on a sort of lagoon which one reaches by steamboat 
from Ernakulam, the terminus of the railway. The 
whole trip, before one reaches this last spot, pre- 
sents a picturesque panorama: it is not quite the 
jungle, since one can see emerging here and there 
from the underbrush oases of cocoanut and banana 
trees and clumps of bamboos serving as enclosures, 
from which rise up flocks of crows with black 
heads and tails and chestnut-colored wings. In 
the fields the peasants go about naked to the waist, 
their heads shaven, with the exception of a little 
round tuft on the very top of their skulls, a tuft 
knotted into a chignon and flung forward on the 
left side, sometimes above the forehead. The 
women proudly carry their whimpering offspring 
on their backs, lifting high their fine, firm breasts 
which have never known the torture of the corset. 
The language spoken by these people is Malay- 
sian, an idiom related to Tamil but nevertheless 



232 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

distinct. One finds also among the coast popula- 
tions the descendants of pure Arab stock from the 
land of Oman. 

Just before the juncture of Schoranur, where 
one changes cars, our train receives a shock. We 
stop. The cowcatcher in front of the locomotive 
has just knocked over and crushed a bufifalo. I 
lean out of the window and make questioning sig- 
nals to the conductor. "Nothing," replies this far 
from orthodox Hindu, as he whistles to start again. 
These things happen so often! . . . We continue 
on our way without troubling any more about the 
unhappy beast which, its side torn, is dying on the 
embankment. Through the palms, stirred now 
and then by a warm breeze, I distinguish the bell- 
tower of a Catholic church. Who knows whether 
in this forgotten mission, some compatriot of ours 
is not leading a glorious and unknown existence? 
... At the stations, the armed Sepoys, infinitely 
respectful of the white man, stand at attention and 
give me the military salute. On the quay of An- 
gamali, the first station of the independent State 
of the Maharajah of Travancore, my boy falls 
into an endless and very inopportune conversation 
with one of his friends whom he has met by 
chance. I find him positively comic, this friend, 
with his European collar and necktie fastened 



THE COAST OF MALABAR 233 

over a pale pink shirt, the tails of which float out 
over a. dirty old pair of gray trousers. But this 
Hindu fashion of wearing the shirt should not 
surprise me; have I not already noticed it among 
most of the Afghans, and even some of the Kash- 
mirians? I get ofif at Cochin just as night is fall- 
ing. Everything is silent, dark. Not a carriage, 
not a horse, not a draught-animal. You would 
think you were in Venice. The illusion is com- 
plete when the Malabar gondolas glide noiselessly 
by over the turgid water of the canals. Shadows 
wander along the single interminable street; on 
the doorsteps are crouching bodies, twisted as if 
in convulsions, whether living souls asleep or dy- 
ing souls in agony, one does not know. At times 
the highway is literally blocked with animals: I 
have to climb circumspectly over a veritable bar- 
ricade of horns, the horns of zebus, rams and goats. 
My boy and my porters follow me grumbling. 
What an extraordinary arrival in this mysterious, 
faraway cityl 

Why I do not know, but this first night I sleep 
badly, in the room of the dawk-bungalow where 
I have taken up my quarters. Intolerable heat, 
mosquitoes humming ravenously about my mos- 
quito netting, creepings and crawlings over the 
straw mattings on the floor. ... A certain expe- 



234 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

rience of the tropics has somewhat hardened me 
against these nocturnal terrors ; long nights passed 
under a tent have accustomed me, during the hours 
of sleep, to the company of insects and reptiles 
that I have known were harmless. To tell the 
truth, I am more affected by the disconcerting 
manner of this arrival in an unknown city noto- 
riously unwholesome and dangerous, owing to the 
contagious diseases that abound there, a city to 
which the tourist very rarely ventures. 

But it was on my awakening that I was greeted 
with the true nightmare. Never shall I forget 
the frightful spectacle of these people of Cochin, 
dragging through the streets, through the alleys, 
along the canals, the spectral horror of their ills. 
On all sides one saw nothing but frightfully dis- 
tended legs and feet, swollen by the oedema of 
elephantiasis — what is called in popular medical 
language the Cochin leg. I turn away with pity 
and nausea from these unfortunates, the calves of 
whose legs look like tree-trunks : the least affected 
ones look as if they were wearing heavy sewer- 
man's boots. This form of leprosy is, it appears, 
hereditary and congenital; it is due principally to 
impure water. Medical treatment brings but slight 
results; the only consolation of the sufferers is to 
see how many others (almost all, in fact) are in 



THE COAST OF MALABAR 235 

the same boat with themselves. After all, these 
poor wretches do not seem to realize the full im- 
port of their repulsive infirmity. The absence of 
pain and the continuance of their normal lives 
have, no doubt, much to do with this. Some of 
them even profit by the disgust which they inspire 
in foreigners, and make a good little income out 
of it. 

But nothing equals the hideousness of the lepers 
suffering from facial lupus. These may be called 
the living dead; their faces, devoured by the dis- 
ease, are nothing but one wound. No fantastic 
vision of Edgar Allan Poe could give any idea of 
these flat faces, whose eyes devour you with their 
lidless stare, whose gaping nasal cavity is an ooz- 
ing hole, covered with flies, whose mouth, lipless 
but filled with dazzling teeth, is fixed in a per- 
petual, motionless grin. 

Compared with these disinherited ones, the 
mere sight of whom makes me ill, the immense 
mass of the maimed and deformed and the other 
Quasimodos with whom the town swarms, is only 
an Asiatic, perhaps a slightly more brutal, trans- 
position of our medieval Court of Miracles. I 
quickly hail a rickshaw, which is dashing by. It 
snatches me away from the horde that surrounds 
me and to which I throw a handful of small coins. 



236 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

Claw-like hands stretch out. But we are off at 
full speed toward the British cantonment and inde- 
pendent Cochin. The Maharajah has fixed the 
sum of two annas as the toll-rate, or more exactly 
the entrance fee, into his State — a curious rem- 
nant of Indian feudalism, which the European 
rulers have scrupulously respected. Hardly have 
we passed the boundary when an armed Sepoy 
rises up from some straw and warns me in bad 
English that the quarter into which I am going 
is at the moment ravaged by the plague. This 
morning they have burned fifty corpses again. I 
judge it more prudent to retrace my path and post- 
pone my visit to the carved wooden temple of 
native Cochin. 

So I give the order: "To the Jewish quarter 1" 
We go down a large avenue, then through a 
series of infinitely curious little streets, where I 
want to stop and take some photographs. But to 
my great astonishment, the Malabar boy who is 
pushing me refuses, with a gentle obstinacy, to 
make any stop. "No good, master, no good!" And 
we continue on our wild jolting way. A few hours 
later I learn that this quarter is a prey to cholera 
morbus. I have had a narrow escape 1 But here 
we are in Kalvati, where the White Jews live. 
At the end of this quarter we can already see the 



THE COAST OF MALABAR 237 

outlines of the houses of Mottancheri, the head- 
quarters of the colony of Black Jews. Hindu 
temples and synagogues jostle one another. On 
the doorsteps of the dwellings are beautiful Jew- 
esses, with white, faintly bronzed skins, whose 
type recalls that of Hagar or Rebecca. The men 
and the little boys are almost uniformly clad in 
light pajamas imported from the Occident: they 
have bare feet thrust into sandals or slippers and 
in general no head-dress, except the rabbis and old 
men, who wear the traditional Jewish turban. 
Altogether, in our day, these White Jews number 
200. The date of their immigration goes back 
to the last destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. 
It is a strange thing, but this little agglomeration 
of White Jews abstains disdainfully from any con- 
tact with their black-skinned co-religionists. These 
latter, however, are the converts of their ancestors; 
the same Talmud is taught without distinction in 
all their synagogues. But nothing has been able 
to prevail against the prejudice of color. 

In the afternoon, to escape the sickening spec- 
tacle of the lepers and the victims of elephantiasis, 
I lounge about the port and wait for the fishermen 
to pull in their nets. Out in the roads, a big war- 
ship is sending up from her smokestacks heavy 



238 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

columns of black smoke. It is the Gneisenau, tne 
German armored cruiser, manned by a crew of 
seven hundred and charged, this year, with carry- 
ing the Crown Prince on a hunting trip to India. 
On the quay, the officers and sailors come and go. 
My fluency in their tongue permits me to begin 
a courteous conversation with the ship's doctor, 
Herr Gustav Koch of Hamburg. Through him 
I learn that the dingey which has just brought him 
to shore is awaiting three charming American 
ladies and two of their compatriots, one of whom 
is a consul, who have asked the favor of being 
the prince's guests and visiting his warship, 

"If you wish to join them," he adds, "nothing 
is simpler. Here they are. Come on board with 



us." 



"With great pleasure, thank you." In my heart 
I am rejoicing at this escape from the obsession 
of the pathological nightmare, nor am I displeased 
at the chance to do a little authorized spying on 
the enemy ship. The dingey comes alongside. 
Salutations, presentations to our gracious compan- 
ions; then an officer gives the signal for departure. 

On the vessel Commander von Uslar and his 
stafif are awaiting us. 



* 



THE COAST OF MALABAR 239 

The years have gone by. 

Why must the remembrance of this princely 
reception, when champagne flowed and the ship's 
orchestra played Yankee Doodle and the Mar- 
seillaise, be forever effaced and spoiled hence- 
forth by the barbarous bombardment of Papeete, 
the work of this same Gneisenau, sunk shortly 
after ofif the Falklands by the valiant British fleet? 

Never to my ear could those seven cannon shots 
that wished us farewell at Cochin have foretold 
the unjustifiable naval attack on the unfortified 
harbor of my dear and poetic Tahiti! I shall al- 
ways see in imagination the panic of those delight- 
ful and indolent Polynesian islanders fleeing des- 
perately before the Teuton shells, and imploring 
on the threshold of the old palace of Pomare the 
protection of the machine-guns that had been land- 
ed from the Zelee, the poor Zelee, shamefully 
bombarded by the pirates on the coral seas I 



CHAPTER XXIII 



MADURA THE MYSTERIOUS 




The Mussulman Moharram at Madura — Indian Aissaouas — 
The Great Temple and its treasures — Under the trading 
arcades of Poutou Mandabam — Noon in the streets — Last 
picture of India which, alas! I am leaving. 

ROM Trichinopoly in a few hours 
one reaches Madura, the holy city 
of southern India, the Tamil Ben- 
ares. 

What strikes you on entering this 
city is the total absence of hotels, 
restaurants, banks, in a word of all that the Eu- 
ropean, coming from Colombo or Madras, thinks 
he has a right to expect. The visitor is obliged 
to take his meals and even sleep in the very sta- 
tion of Madura, where they have fitted up a great 
dining-room and several scantily furnished bed- 
rooms. There is, indeed, a dawk-bungalow for 
the use of strangers, but the few rooms that go 
to make it up are uncomfortable and unsanitary; 

moreover, one is exposed to the promiscuity of 

240 





1 


w^^^nf 1'i '^i'llPf!?^ 


?pi"'ii|lnl3|3 


ilJi,|»--iT«^" 


T| 1 1 M M "^ 


M Ml th 'l....^;^^- - 


HP^ --^v^^^^l 


' i m . - 



THE PAGODA OF JAMBUKESWAR, NEAR TRICHINOPOLY 




THE ENVIRONS OF MADURA — THE PAGODA AND POND OF 
TEPPA-KULAM 




THE CAR OF THE JUGGERNAUT 




SRIRANGAN ENTRANCE TO THE TEMPLE 



MADURA THE MYSTERIOUS 241 

the natives, who come and go before the threshold, 
as well as to the deafening racket of wailing in- 
fants and beggars stammering out their long and 
monotonous litanies. Do not look in Madura, 
therefore, for English shops and street-cars. So 
much the better! There is an unbelievable amount 
of local color; one elbows a heterogeneous assembly 
of priests and merchants. The rarity of the Eu- 
ropean note is more striking in these surroundings 
than elsewhere. In the matter of vehicles, the 
little ox-carts called djerkds are almost the only 
means of locomotion in this ancient city of Coro- 
mandel. 

When I stopped off there for the first time, the 
great Mussulman feast of the Moharram was in 
full swing. It is a sort of carnival which takes 
place once a year, in January, and lasts eight days. 
It is in celebration of the defeat and massacre of 
the sons of Hussein and Hassan by the orthodox 
troops of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet. The 
fanatics smear themselves with wax, daub their 
faces and their whole bodies with violent colors, 
trick themselves out in ragged finery of all shades, 
and are escorted by a crowd of street urchins. 
''Ddou seya mandam andreh/" they cry, waving 
their sabers and lances ferociously while, out of 
their respected paths, the drovers pull the little 



242 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

zebus with their painted horns and their backs 
laden with shellfish, crying in their turn, "Ei/ EU 
'ttah!" The procession takes its way towards a 
circle dug in the earth and filled with lighted 
coals, in one of the village squares. These A'is- 
saouas then dash forward with savage cries toward 
the burning brazier, which they tread and cross, 
some running, others walking slowly, amid the 
loud acclamations of the spectators who watch the 
voluntary martyrs with devotion. 

I leave these possessed spirits and these madmen 
to their savage practices and betake myself to the 
Great Temple, which is certainly entitled to be 
classed among the architectural marvels of the 
world. To reach it one goes down the great high- 
way called Permal-Kohil, passing the pond of the 
same name. To the right rises the church of the 
Catholic mission about which are grouped the 
richest dwellings of the Madura merchants. Then 
I enter the West-Massis, which cuts the Permal- 
Kohil at right angles. There my curiosity is at- 
tracted by the capricious little designs and ara- 
besques, drawn each morning in many-colored 
chalks on the pavement in front of the houses, as 
an homage to the tutelary deity. I admire also 
the beautiful fountain, presented to her fellow- 
citizens by a rich Hindu lady named Lakchmi, 



MADURA THE MYSTERIOUS 243 

which represents, from right to left, Sobramanye, 
the second son of Siva, then Minakchi, his wife, 
then Ganesa, Siva's eldest son, whose elephant 
trunk falls in classic lines over his beneficent 
navel. And here is the great street of the West 
Tower, leading straight to the colossal temple, at 
the end of which, to the right, rises a little votive 
altar in the form of a lingham, (At daybreak old 
widows with shaven heads come to sprinkle it pi- 
ously with red and white powder.) In the streets 
there is a veritable tintinnabulation of brace- 
lets, rings, anklets, and those ear-rings that pull 
the lobe far down. Among poor women this last 
ornament is called pambaram, among the rich 
itediki. Very strange, also, are the heavy nose- 
pendants called mouketti, and those fastened to the 
partition of the nose and called pillako. Nothing 
could be more droll, finally, than those shameless 
little girls and those quite naked babies whose only 
costume consists of a silver heart hung from their 
hips by a cord. 

I arrive in front of the entrance gopura. It 
is the fourth porch of the West Tower within the 
parallelogram of the great surrounding wall; its 
own walls are painted with the colors of Vishnu. 
Great cocoanut trees with waving tops sway above 
the flowering bananas. But what religious majesty 



244 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

presides over the entrance to the South Portal of 
the sanctuary! Two gigantic stone elephants stand 
guard there, near the pond of the Golden Lotus. 
A little way off I see the apocalyptic Car of Jug- 
gernaut which, during the great festivals, is 
dragged by human arms through the principal 
street of the city. About it are grouped, like hum- 
ble satellites, little cars covered with straw or 
sheltered under a hangar of corrugated iron. In 
our day there are still men fanatical enough to 
get themselves crushed under its massive, holy 
wheels. This thought obsesses me; and it is not 
without a certain emotion that I venture for the 
first time into the hall of Peret, where the sacred 
paroquets, cockatoos and parrots are chattering in 
their gilded cages suspended from the walls and 
from vaults moldy with saltpeter. 

How can one express the marvel of those splen- 
did high reliefs representing elephants, lions, 
monsters, gods and goddesses, grimacing genii, all 
carved out of the solid blocks of stone and as care- 
fully worked as the Gothic lace of our cathedrals I 
In striking contrast, there rises to the left, encrust- 
ed, as it were, on the breast of this floral sculpture, 
a little black idol, dirty, greasy, grotesquely clad 
in a white shirt bordered with red. It is my sym- 
pathetic friend Ganesa again, bidding me wel- 



MADURA THE MYSTERIOUS 245 

come. Really I cannot do better than to sprinkle 
his pedestal, as the custom is, with a libation of 
cocoanut milk. 

"The Prakaram, sahib!" 

It is my native guide, my faithful Subbaraya 
Pillai, who utters this exclamation in which rever- 
ence and fear are mingled. One of the mysterious 
galleries of the temple has just opened before me, 
a second interior, covered passage where reigns a 
disquieting half-light. It leads to the great hall 
where the priests, on certain occasions, are accus- 
tomed to spread out in sumptuous flat baskets the 
treasures of Minakchi, the Goddess-with-the- fish's- 
eyes. It is very seldom that one can see these treas- 
ures. The Brahmans do not permit the simple 
tourist (even if he is furnished with British recom- 
mendations from high quarters) to look at them 
save at a charge of fifteen' rupees, in addition to 
a tip of five rupees for the guardian. Total, about 
seven dollars, which is rather dear. Fortunately 
it so happened that on my visit I met there a high 
English official from Southern India, whose guest 
I had been in the country of Malabar. Thanks to 
him I was able, without untying my purse, to view 
these incomparable treasures piously preserved in 
a cave where the vampire bats wheel and flit with 
their funereal laughter. An unbelievable heap of 



246 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

precious stones, most of them square-cut and clum- 
sily inserted in their mountings of chased or fili- 
greed gold: pearls, rubies, diamonds, sapphires, 
emeralds, beryls, topazes, etc. . . . The diamonds 
attract my attention particularly: they are enor- 
mous but badly set ofif, rose-cut, or like fragments 
of glass, sometimes even of dull glass. We are 
far from the diamond-cutters of Amsterdam and 
the brilliant displays of Paris! ... I observe the 
beautiful tapestries embroidered with pearls, 
head-dresses, hats, bonnets, tunics of multi-colored 
silks but dirty — all these riches displayed with a 
taste that is na'ive and barbaric. 

I next visit the celebrated Room of the Thou- 
sand Columns (in reality there are only 997). 
What refinement in the sculptures and the orna- 
mentation! The general plan, also, is worthy of 
admiration because of its beautiful and severe ar- 
rangement. In this hall are a great quantity of 
pasteboard masks for the sacred processions, as 
well as tambourines and little bells used to an- 
nounce to the people the passage of the idols. Still 
preceded by my guide, without whom I should 
certainly lose my way in this labyrinth, I proceed 
toward the dark cavern where the two genii with 
multiple arms and legs, who are named Djea and 
Vidjea, defend the entrance to the tabernacle. 



MADURA THE MYSTERIOUS 247 

There, wrapped in its swaddling-clothes, dim and 
indistinct, is the grotesque doll that represents Siva 
the Redoubtable. Very shortly a procession is go- 
ing to carry it away. . . . 

But what is this? From the altar of the planets 
and the constellations, a pleasant fruity odor 
spreads through the vault, the exhalations of flow- 
ers, fruits and sweet-smelling oils brought by the 
faithful. A great throng of pilgrims, in fact, has 
just plunged into the gallery of the Prakaram, in 
order to file, their ofiferings in their hands, before 
the altar of the sanguinary Kali, then before that 
of Siva. This fresh and springlike odor pursues 
me to the exit. In the darkness through which I 
have been floundering, in the chaos of this incom- 
prehensible and age-old Sanskrit theogony, the 
whififs of this perfume that reach my nostrils give 
me a delicious sensation of renewal. The Euro- 
pean soul feels itself so constrained in the mys- 
teries of the Hindu religion, the secrets of which it 
can pierce only so incompletely! It is already too 
highly favored if it can grasp by intuition the 
sealed meaning of the rites and ceremonies of 
which it is the witness. 

Bright rays of sunshine now light up the portal 
of the Minakchi-Naik gallery. It is here that, in 
the evening at about seven o'clock, the Brahmans 



248 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

light little rudimentary night-lights, simple wicks 
dipped in oil which, when night has come, illu- 
mine the entrance to the passages and caves. Under 
the arcades young girls and children are laughing- 
ly selling flowers, fruits and ex-votos, little per- 
fumed sachets, seals and many-colored powders; 
a little further on are rice-cakes, destined to feed 
the pilgrims and the guardians of the immense 
pagoda. On the steps at my feet, little boys are 
playing and quarreling; their heads are half- 
shaven, after the fashion of Coromandel, the re- 
maining hair being fastened together in tufts or 
twisted behind the head, which makes them look 
like little Chinese. 

"Salaam, sahib, salaam/" 

Leaving their games, they prostrate themselves 
as I pass, calling down on me all the blessings of 
the Brahmanistic Trimurti. The whole crowd of 
them, delighted with the few annas I have thrown 
them, have dragged me toward the great elephant 
dedicated to Siva. Daubed and tatooed, the pachy- 
derm, fastened by its feet to the pillars that sur- 
round it, swings its trunk heavily from left to right 
and breaks forth, from moment to moment, into 
a long trumpeting that tells me how impatiently 
it is awaiting my titbits. There are a great many 



MADURA THE MYSTERIOUS 249 

of these elephants consecrated to the divinities in 
the interior of the temples. The piety of the faith- 
ful, I imagine, provides for their subsistence more 
than the care of the ushers or guardians licensed 
by the British authorities and entrusted with the 
policing and internal administration. 

Here I am, quite outside of the first cincture of 
the temple, in the merchants' hall called Poutou 
Mandabam, the new market built by the king 
Tirumala Naik in the seventeenth century of our 
era, and which cost that potentate the sum of five 
million dollars. Impossible to imagine, still more 
so to describe, the extravagant richness of those 
four rows of columns, all of sculptured stone, 
which constitute a veritable forest of high and low 
reliefs, wrought and decorated to an infinite de- 
gree 1 Under these vaults, the bronze and copper 
merchants, the potters, the booksellers, the tailors, 
the carpenters, the cabinet-makers, the goldsmiths 
toil and cry their wares, squatting on the ground. 
I have the good luck, thanks to my guide's inter- 
preting, to acquire some very old and rare forks 
of chased copper, which have been used in the 
sacrifices, as well as some antique statuettes of gods 
and goddesses destined to increase my little Hindu 
pantheon. 



250 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

The poignant hour of departure is approacn- 
ing. . . . Before I enter the train again for Tuti- 
corin, Ceylon, Java and Angkor, I want to fill my 
eyes, I want to line my bags, too, with all those 
dear knick-knacks of art that will bring India back 
to me. 

We are passing through the last wall and across 
the city; following the labyrinth of streets and 
passages under the hot noonday sun, we reach the 
station. We file past the shops of the perfumers, 
preparing their pastes, their cosmetics and their 
unguents. Very curious, these shops, in the back 
of which are cages, each containing a living skunk, 
the glands of which, as we know, furnish the odor- 
ous matter that is the basis of Indian perfumery. 
Some young girls pass, crowned with pinks and 
smeared with curcuma. Their black eyes laugh 
in their safifron faces. They are on their way, I 
see, to a little shop to buy a cocoanut the refreshing 
milk of which they will eagerly drink. 

Above our heads eagles are wheeling, ravens 
croaking, while palm-rats chase one another over 
the tiled roofs and the interwoven palms and mo- 
tionless lizards bask in the sunlight. 

It is the noon hour, under the cloudless sky of 
India, to which I must say farewell this evening 



MADURA THE MYSTERIOUS 251 

(for the second time, alas!) with the same pang at 
my heart and the same grave look one gives to 
people and things one loves — and that one must 
leave without the absolute certainty of seeing them 
again. 



CHAPTER XXIV 




DEAD HINDU CITIES 

Mirages of the past — Anuradhapura, the Cingalese Nineveh — 
The Javanese temples of Mendoet and Boroboedoer — ^The 
life of Buddha in sculpture — Hindu colonies in Cambodia 
— ^Angkor, the prodigious and mysterious. 

NE of the most vivid and lasting 
impressions of my youth as a stu- 
dent will always be that luminous 
morning when, for the first time, 
I climbed up the Propylaeum of the 
Parthenon. 

I had not mounted the Acropolis with the de- 
sign of making there — after the fashion of Cha- 
teaubriand, Renan, Barres — the mystic or philo- 
sophical or pagan pra3rer which each of us, ac- 
cording to his ego, feels rising invincibly to his 
lips. If such an audacity had occurred to me for 
a moment, the insufficiency of my means would 
have at once revealed the sacrilegiousness of it. 
Having reached the summit of the sacred hill, 

therefore, I turned and looked about. And I was 

252 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 253 

immediately seized, conquered, overwhelmed by 
the august setting and the serene beauty of the 
place of prayer. At my feet a second city had 
risen up, an ancient city, how different from the 
modern city, prosaic, turbulent and busy. For 
the first time in my life, I saw a dead city, the 
Athens of Pericles, of Plato, iEschylus and Phid- 
ias, to which my still recent studies in the human- 
ities had so tenderly attached me. A dead city! 
Can you understand what magic there is in this 
word for a twenty-year-old spirit? To bend over 
the vestiges of the past, to attempt to draw out its 
secret by reading the life of a vanished or a long 
submerged people on the bas-reliefs of a wall or 
the columns of a temple, from the pillar to the 
frieze, running through the whole scale of the cap- 
ital, the abacus, the architrave; to pick out along 
the paved streets the traces of cart-wheels ; to lean 
over vaults still impregnated with whiffs of ancient 
incense where millions of prayers, anthems, im- 
precations, menacing or naive, have, as it were, 
crystallized. Ah! that beautiful, captivating, 
fascinating search! How one feels one's whole 
self vibrate to it, senses, heart and brain! . . , 

It was in this way that I, the child of a supreme- 
ly living city, Paris, became, during the course 
of my travels, a passionate lover of dead cities. 



254 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

And in particular of three ancient cities of Hindu 
colonists that shone, centuries and centuries ago, 
with the same brilliancy as the Greek Alexandria 
in Egypt, and the Latin Timgad in Algeria : Anu- 
radhapura, Boroboedoer, Angkor! . . . Three 
names, three epochs, three glories of the past, of 
the time when India, the prodigious sower, scat- 
tered its excess of men to the four winds of the 
world, in order to reap the harvest of kingdoms I 
Anuradhapura is the barbarous name of the 
ancient Anuragrammum, which was known to the 
Romans and was for twelve centuries the capital 
of Ceylon. Situated in the center of the island, 
about fifty-four miles from Trincomalee where 
the pearl fisheries are, it bears the deep imprint 
of the Hindu influence and civilization. Its ruin 
and devastation were the work equally of the con- 
quering Tamils and Malabars, whose fanatical 
Brahmanism had driven them forth in a crusade 
against the Buddhism that was then threatening to 
win over the entire island. Why is it that the 
passage of the invaders has left — as did that of the 
Thai at Angkor — only a dead city, abandoned and 
sacked, about which the jungle has protectingly 
wound its octopus-like arms? . . . You fall into a 
reverie as you contemplate these temples and pal- 
aces which were built two centuries before Christ, 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 255 

the home of a splendor and magnificence that made 
Anuradhapura the rival of Babylon, Nineveh and 
Persepolis. But however devastated it may be to- 
day, this "City buried under the vines," as Pierre 
Loti has exquisitely named it, still permits us a 
glimpse, here and there, of some marvel which is 
intact, or almost intact: the fish-pond of Pokuna, 
a short distance from the Queen's Baths, where 
only the bull-frogs, the tortoises and the water 
adders disport themselves today; the forest of col- 
umns of the pagoda of Lankarama, with its almost 
Ionian abaci; the decorative cornice of the great, 
massive dagoba of Ruanwelli and its curious di- 
vinities with their head-dresses of hieratic tiaras 
made from the body of a crocodile, the tail of a 
bird, the trunk of an elephant; the upright statues 
of King Dutughemunu and his priests; the foun- 
dations and courses of Abayashiri, the truncated 
column of which dominates all the surrounding 
country from the top of its hill ; and also the sculp- 
tured doorways of the princely and priestly dwell- 
ings, the parvis of lunar marble, decorated with a 
procession of different animals, all strikingly life- 
like; finally those dreaming Buddhas, life-size, 
which one meets at every step, under the trees, in 
the branches, and which almost frighten one with 



256 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

their fixed gaze and the tranquil, mocking expres- 
sion of their lips. 

Oh ! what a strange thing it is, this necropolis of 
stone, over which the sun sheds in spots a light 
which is bright indeed, but powerless to bring to 
life a whole past of activity, luxury and opulence, 
of tumultuous, sensual, frenzied joy. . . . 

Listen to this old, this very old and very evoca- 
tive Cingalese inscription: 

"Innumerable are the temples and palaces of 
Anuradhapura ; their golden cupolas and pavilions 
glitter in the sunlight. In the streets, there is a 
multitude of soldiers armed with bows and arrows. 
Elephants, horses, chariots, thousands of men, 
come and go continually. There are jugglers, 
dancers, musicians of divers countries whose tim- 
bals and instruments are ornamented with gold. 
The greatest streets are those of the Moon and the 
King, the street covered with sand, and a fourth. 
And in the Street of the Moon there are eleven 
thousand houses." 

And today all this that once lived, laughed, sang, 
loved and suffered, all this is nothing but a king- 
dom of crumbling ruins, gray rubbish and verdure 
on a foundation ojf ocher-colored earth. 

Sic transit gloria mundi. 

Less poetry, less reverie, less melancholy, more 




TEPHA-kUI.AM — ^IHK TKMFLK AND STATUETTES OF KALI 1HI-. si. AVER 




MADURA — THE GREAT I'AGODA 




BOROBOEDOER (JAVA) — THE GREAT TEMPLE DEDICATED TO BUDDHA 




GIANT HEADS OF BUDDHA OF THE CITY OF ANGOR-THOM 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 257 

religious feeling emanates from the dead cities of 
Indo-Java. 

It is in the region called Midden-Java, or the 
heart of Java, that the principal monuments of 
Hindu inspiration are assembled; almost all of 
them go back to the year 800 of the Sjaka era, that 
is to say, to the ninth century of our Christian 
era. Such, for example, are the temples of Tjandi- 
Bima, Prambanam and Mendoet, w^hich reveal 
many traits in common. The architecture is some- 
what heavy and squat, without real grandeur; here 
and there, among the confused heaps of stones, 
one finds some fragment of a bas-relief, some alle- 
gorical statue relating to the theogony of the 
Vedas; strictly speaking, there is nothing astonish- 
ing, nothing unique, save perhaps the pagoda of 
Mendoet, which the volcano Merapi covered with 
ashes in the ninth century and only brought to light 
a thousand years later. The square base of this 
pagoda, built of brick covered with sandstone, 
gives it somewhat the appearance of a mausoleum. 
The bas-reliefs that adorn it represent fables, 
among them the apologue of the tortoise and the 
two ducks. Other symbolical sculptures, also, are 
to be noted a little to the front of the steep, pro- 
jecting stairway that passes under the pyramidal 
vault. In the interior of the sanctuary are three 



258 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

colossal figures of Buddha, not squatting, in the 
legendary position, but seated in Occidental fash- 
ion, the head aureoled with a sort of flame. At 
Tjandi-Sewoe, another archaeological pilgrimage, 
there are only ruins, except for two grimacing and 
grotesque kneeling genii that seem to be keeping 
guard over the foundations of a vanished palace 
of dreams. 

Quite different is Boroboedoer, the marvel of 
Java, the architectural rival of Angkor. 

Boroboedoer (the construction of which was 
contemporaneous with Charlemagne) signifies in 
Javanese "Thousand Buddhas." It is a strange 
vision, a building the first and last of its kind, re- 
sembling no other monument of Brahmanic in- 
spiration; it is, if I dare to use such a figure, a 
hymn in stone to the greater glory of Buddha, the 
Reformer. 

Imagine an immense bell, itself adorned with a 
multitude of other little open-work bells carved 
upon it, the whole framed by the summit of the 
volcano Merapi, nine thousand feet high, and the 
peak of Mount Soembing, about ten thousand feet 
high. In addition to its pedestal, which is par- 
tially buried in the earth, and to its dagoba, or 
central bell-tower which, they say, shelters some 
relics of the great Contemplator — the temple has 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 259 

seven stories, or more exactly seven terraces. (Ob- 
serve this number seven which one meets myste- 
riously in all the Sanskrit myths, and for which 
many other religions show an elective affinity.) 
About one hundred and sixty feet high and with 
a total length of about three hundred and twenty- 
five feet, the edifice is turned towards the four 
cardinal points, as is shown by the four stairways 
passing under the curiously carved doorways. Two 
hundred statues of Buddha and fourteen hundred 
bas-reliefs serve as decorations. 

One must wander at one's leisure along these 
galleries, open to the sky, to study and sometimes 
decipher the meaning of these astonishing sculp- 
tures which Dr. Leemans, the learned Dutch 
archaeologist, and the late king of Siam, Chula- 
longkorn, brought to the attention of the civilized 
world in 1896. It also seems likely that the in- 
spiration of Christianity — the monument dates 
from the ninth century of our era — was not abso- 
lutely foreign to those who adapted certain of the 
legends represented there. But it is the single 
instance of anything being borrowed by the build- 
ers of Boroboedoer from other religions. 

While at Angkor we shall soon see Buddhism 
and Brahmanism existing side by side, at Boro- 
boedoer, on the contrary, we find nothing but the 



26o MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

single, final glorification of Siddhartha Gautama, 
surnamed Cakya-Muni (the ascetic), then Bud- 
dha (he who comprehends). In all the bas-re- 
liefs that run along the base of the friezes of 
Boroboedoer, cover the entablatures, wind along 
the quasi-ogival porticoes, there mounts up towards 
the central dagoha as it were an interminable ac- 
clamation. All the phases of the life of the Regen- 
erator, the obscurest as well as the most glorious, 
are respectfully and chronologically recorded: his 
birth, first, at Kapilavastou, in the garden of the 
Loubini where, as the king's son, surrounded and 
adored by all the gods in the Hindu Pantheon, he 
receives on the head a rain of lotus blossoms fallen 
from the skies, while the choirs of Bodhisattvas 
or friendly genii intone his praises; then his ado- 
lescence and his intellectual precocity which 
astonished and stupefied his masters and all who 
surrounded him; then his marriage to the princess 
Gopa, his life of luxury and pleasure; then, on a 
walk one day, his successive meetings with an old 
man, a leper, a corpse and a monk, and the reflec- 
tions suddenly inspired in him by the weakness 
and nothingness of human vanities; his flight from 
the royal palace that very evening to go and taste 
among the philosophers and hermits the first-fruits 
of the pure and infinite joys of the Initiation; his 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 261 

retreat for six years in a distant forest, with the 
animals of the jungle as his only companions ; his 
instruction and his fast of forty-nine days at the 
foot of the sacred fig-tree, the Bo, in the shade of 
which, struck with grace, his soul finally opened 
to knowledge. 

Later on we shall see him surrounded by his 
favorite Bhikchous, wandering all over India, con- 
verting kings, priests, warriors, beggars, always 
humble and gentle, preaching his belief, his head 
shaven, his body wrapped in a poor sari of yellow 
cloth, his only wealth the staff and the bowl from 
which as he journeyed he ate his frugal pittance. 
Then the circular bas-relief — which is always the 
same and unwinds like a ribbon from the base to 
the point of the edifice — shows us the death of the 
Reformer. It is night. . . . The Master, eighty- 
one years old, is seated in his favorite pose of medi- 
tation; he exhorts his disciples to follow no other 
guides than his doctrine and their own conscience. 
. . . The first ray of dawn pierces the sky, and 
Cakya-Muni enters into ecstasy, to sink gently into 
death and the Nirvana of his dreams and hopes. 

Ah I what a beautiful missal page is that, carved 
in the living rock by marvelous artists to whom 
Faith, even more than the wings of genius, has 
given the secret of moving, century after century, 



262 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

all the races and all the religious beliefs, without 
distinction, of our humanity. 

Observe how far aesthetic pleonasm can go, how 
far it can insinuate itself. Here are little cupolas, in 
the shape of hand-bells, symmetrically surround- 
ing the central dagoba which may be considered, 
if you wish, the chief bell, the "Savoyarde" of this 
basilica. There are thirty-two of them on the first 
terrace, twenty-four on the second, and sixteen on 
the third. Well, they all, through their stone 
open-work, permit one to see a naked Buddha 
seated in meditation. The idol — pardon mel the 
statue (for Cakya-Muni, who taught that other 
sages had existed before him, never demanded 
any worship) — the statue, I say, is enclosed in a 
sense under each of these big or little satellite bells, 
and so well enclosed that one does not know 
whether it is independent or forms a part of it. 
It is a marvelous achievement of art. A little more 
and we should expect to see invisible force move 
and set ringing these stone clappers, with their 
human shapes, giving them all at once a mysterious 
and paradoxical resonance. . . . 

A curious thing! Buddhism has almost com- 
pletely disappeared today in Java. But the popu- 
lation about Boroboedoer, which is principally 
composed of Mussulmen and Chinese, still believe 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 263 

that by touching one of these imprisoned statues 
one imprisons one's happiness, and that by prostrat- 
ing oneself and praying before the bas-relief of the 
birth of Buddha one is certain to obtain a numer- 
ous posterity. Islam, which, in our day, has re- 
placed Buddhism in most of the Dutch settlements 
of this island-India, has unfortunately none of 
these charming and poetic superstitions. In the 
Mohammedan architecture and sculpture of the 
country there is the same poverty of the imagina- 
tion, the same insipidity and the same mediocrity. 
At Sumatra, as at Java, I have seen, masquerading 
under the pompous name of mosques, mere com- 
monplace square wooden houses, far more, I must 
confess, like our covered European markets than 
the splendors of marble and porphyry which I 
have admired at St. Sophia in Stamboul, the 
Djumna-Mosjid at Delhi and the Taj at Agra. 

And now, at a bound, let us leap the space that 
separates Java, the Enchantress, from Angkor, 
that marvelous Angkor to which every one of us 
has made a pilgrimage, if only in our dreams I . . . 

"Marvelous Angkor!" 

It is also called mysterious Angkor because of 
its enigmatic history, its at once near and distant 
past, its uncertain and problematical existence. 



264 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

. . . If you question some Cambodian about it, 
wandering through this desert of ruins and splen- 
dors, he will shake his head with a half-Nirvanic 
smile at the corner of his lips: "Winged genii built 
it all in one night. . . ." 

And you will go your way charmed with the 
unsophisticated and deliciously legendary reply, 
without any other enlightenment about these 
strange Khmer, about the genesis of their colossal 
works of architecture and sculpture, or finally 
about the titanic wave that engulfed them a bare 
five or six centuries before our time. What we 
know of them, or what we believe we know of 
them, is that they built their first temples, the 
Prakhan and the Bayon, for example, toward the 
year 800 of our era, and reached the summit of 
their art about 1200, with this other Parthenon, 
the Great Temple, even richer and more grandiose 
than Angkor- Vat. Thus while we in Europe were 
raising heavenward the filigree-work of our 
Gothic fleches, they were continuing to make the 
Hindu basements and embankments, the marvelous 
bas-reliefs, like those of Egypt and Assyria, and to 
reproduce, by intuition and synthesis, the Doric 
column and the Corinthian capital. But what is 
even more astounding is that they had anticipated 
by three centuries the interlacing of Renaissance 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 265 

foliage. Yes, these Khmer conceived before we 
did the most delicate motifs of our chateaus of the 
Loire I . . . The same efflorescence of stone blos- 
soms today at Angkor-Vat as at Blois, with this 
perhaps paradoxical difiference, that its obscurity, 
the lava at its roots and the octopus-like vines have 
preserved the former better from the slow, sure 
and inexorable devastation of time. 

But, first of all, who were they, whence did they 
come, those whom the mystery of their past obliges 
us to call merely "the Masters of Angkor"? They 
were, it is believed, an artistic and warlike race, 
Brahmanistic in religion and probably belonging 
to the caste of the Brahmans. And it must have 
been one of their chiefs, Kambu by name, who 
founded toward the fifth century of our era the 
kingdom called Kambudjas, whence we have the 
modern name of Cambodia. The only exact 
knowledge we have of them is that their sway over 
the Indo-Chinese country which they established 
lasted eight centuries. Eight hundred years dur- 
ing which they raised, to the glory of their gods, 
immense temples surrounded by deep moats and 
ramparts pierced by semi-pointed doorways, per- 
mitting the passage of chariots and the armed war- 
elephants. These walls and moats must have been 
intended to protect the princes, priests, divinities 



266 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

and their treasures quite as much as to increase 
the mystery that enveloped the ceremonial rites. 

Nor must it be supposed that Angkor and its de- 
pendencies composed an isolated group in the land. 
Other ruins, almost equally admirable — such as 
Pnom-Chisor and its mediaeval eagle's nest of a 
citadel; Prakhan and its eight kilometers of sur- 
rounding wall; Vat-Nokor and its pagoda, Koh- 
Ker and many other sanctuaries, today lost in the 
jungle, equally deserve the visit of the tourist and 
the inspection of the archaeologist. But to reach 
them is difficult, almost impossible; for the time 
being we must give them up. 

The only historic data we have that can tell us 
anything about the extent and frontiers of the an- 
cient Khmer kingdom is an old Chinese inscrip- 
tion, going back to the year 650 of our era. It tells 
us that the country was bounded "on the north by 
mountains and valleys, on the south by a great lake 
and swamps that were often flooded. One could 
count as many as thirty cities there, dowered with 
magnificent buildings. Each city was peopled 
with many thousands of inhabitants." 

One question suggests itself. What must have 
been the course followed by these Hindus as far 
as the basin of the Mekong? 

If we are to believe M. Foucher, who gave his 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 267 

views on this matter in a lecture before the Comite 
de VAsie Frangaise, in 1908, we should be correct 
in ascribing this ethnical Hinduization to priests 
of the rite of Siva who came from the basin of the 
Ganges in successive human waves which were 
blended, amalgamated, with the conquered popu- 
lations, constituting at each influx a new ruling 
class, but of the same origin as the old, and graft- 
ing itself upon the former. 

The regretted General de Beylie, in his work 
entitled U Architecture Hindoue en Extreme- 
Orient, takes issue with this hypothesis. In his 
opinion — based on certain indications given by the 
Chinese annals and on an orographical study of 
Cambodia also — civilization was brought to the 
peoples of this part of Indo-China not by Sivaite 
missionaries but by adventurers, exiles or traders 
who came by sea. These immigrants must have 
come originally not only from the Dekkan and 
southern India, but even from the coast of Orissa 
and the valley of the Ganges, especially so far as 
concerns the coast of Burmah. Their point of de- 
parture may have been Madras, and they may 
have put in at different ports on the eastern coast 
of the peninsula of Malacca, with frequent chang- 
ings of ships at the Isthmus of Kra, to end their 



268 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

journey among the deltas of the Menam and the 
Mekong. 

As for us, without presuming to pass judgment, 
let us state emphatically that whether they came 
by land or by sea, the Hindu colonists brought with 
them a mature art, genially conceived and lavished 
on everything about them, as a delight to the eyes, 
as well as copings for their monuments, as elab- 
orately and carefully decorated as a piece of 
jewelry, and even the three materials they em- 
ployed, linonite, sandstone and wood. 

But whence did they recruit the thousands of 
artisans necessary for the realization of their 
grandiose projects? 

It is probable that for procuring, transporting 
and preparing the raw materials they had recourse 
to the conquered peoples who had been reduced to 
slavery and were requisitioned as workmen to cut 
out the blocks which Hindu artists, recruited from 
the conquering armies, then sculptured and fin- 
ished. And here I must stop for a parenthesis, 
the double import of which, social and philo- 
sophical, will escape no one. Before Jesus Christ, 
all labor was forced labor, compulsory labor, slave 
labor. History and archeology have established 
irrefragably that the pyramids of Gizeh, the 
temples of Thebes, the Colosseum of Rome, the 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 269 

sanctuaries and palaces of Anuradhapura, Boro- 
doedoer and of Angkor were the work of an en- 
slaved humanity. Then came Christianity, which 
loosened all chains. Centuries passed. . . . And 
presently the cathedrals, Romanesque, Gothic, 
Renaissance, pure jewels set by hands that were 
free, whether voluntary or hired, flung heaven- 
ward their golden fleches, like rockets of liberation 
and hope. 

But to return to the Khmer kingdom. For 800 
years, during the course of which were raised the 
buildings we admire today, till 1250, the period 
of decadence and weakness, even until 1296, the 
date at which the Chinese traveler Tcheou-ta- 
Kouan declares that "during the recent wars with 
the Siamese the land has been completely devas- 
tated," dynasties succeeded one another there. If 
we accept this Chinese report we may suppose 
that the victorious Thai armies crowned the hu- 
miliation of the conquered by destroying the proof 
of their genius and their power of old. But it is 
also possible that the slaves of the Hindu immi- 
grants, after the overthrow of their conquerors in 
the thirteenth century, may have quite simply re- 
volted and turned their fury against the sanctuaries 
of the divinities which had been unfavorable to 



270 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

them, against the temples and palaces the construc- 
tion of which had cost them so much hardship and 
caused so many deaths, in a climate so feverish 
and unwholesome as that of the Great Lake of 
Cambodia. 

In any case, whether because of destruction from 
the outside or internal mutiny, it is probable that 
we are confronted by an act of vandalism. In fact, 
the archaeologists assure us that the majority of 
the ruins could not have been caused by vegetable 
growth or by seismic disturbances, which are un- 
known in this region. Only the combined efifort 
of several hundred men, united in a blind rage of 
destruction, could have caused such wrack and 
ruin as that, for example, of the towers and the 
galleries of Prakhan. We can pick out on the 
ground stones that are intact corresponding to 
other stones in perfect condition that have re- 
mained in their places ; and we observe, also, mas- 
sive parts of some building that is no longer any- 
thing but a heap of blocks while just beside it there 
still rises a light wall which the least effort might 
have overthrown. 

Scientific deductions that proceed, unfortu- 
nately, from nothing but conjectures! In contrast 
to the Egyptians and the Greeks, the Khmer, if 
they built much, scarcely wrote at all. Are we 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 271 

perhaps attributing to them here intentions they 
never possessed? 

But my traveler's eyes, the eyes of one who has 
contemplated so many august ruins — Greece, 
Egypt, Timgad, Carthage, Golconda, Amber, 
Anuradhapura, the tombs of the Mings and those 
of Hue, the Hindu temples of Java, Boroboedoer 
and Prambanan — my traveler's, my pilgrim's 
eyes, as my master and friend Pierre Loti immor- 
tally said, my eyes refused to solve the riddle, they 
saw, they only wished to see the marvel. 

And it is this marvel, this miracle that you 
should hasten to visit, for it is impossible that five 
or six years more should pass without the most 
beautiful ruins in the world being definitely clas- 
sified, visited, swarmed over by the whole Anglo- 
Saxondom of two continents. Too many Baed- 
ekers will then reel off their anthems under the 
vaults of Angkor- Vat or the domes of Angkor- 
Tom. Who knows, even, whether the present com- 
fortable bungalow, so in harmony with the spot, 
will not be replaced by some Angkor Palace Hotel 
with bedizened and obsequious lackeys? It is all 
wrong that the amazement, the emotion that sim- 
mers in you, that boils up and boils over should 
be diminished, lessened, destroyed by your sur- 
roundings. The poet, the artist, the thinker that 



272 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

dreams in each of you would suffer too much from 
contact with these contingencies, these banalities. 
Go alone by yourself, therefore; commune with 
the radiant beauty of things, enjoy in solitude, as 
an egoist — oh, yes! — the unspeakable majesty of 
these places of prayer, where the faith that moves 
mountains once heaped up the most disconcerting 
and formidable pile of stones that have ever been 
cut, sculptured — I was about to say chased. 

Ah! how triumphant it is, the arrival on ele- 
phant-back at Angkor-Tom, before the Ninevite 
glory of this Bayon, a veritable Tower of Babel 
with a human face, which the pick of the late M. 
Commaille, its learned and respectful curator, first 
shaved of its too thick hair of fig and banana trees! 
And how bewildered the spirit is in the presence 
of such a grandeur of plan and such exquisite skill 
in the execution of these bas-reliefs, which we owe 
to the chisels of obscure workmen whose name 
and race have remained unknown. These bas- 
reliefs — on which for hundreds and hundreds of 
yards the battles of the peoples on foot, on horse- 
back, on elephant-back, in junks, unroll them- 
selves — make me think of the celebrated motifs of 
Boroboedoer of which I have just spoken and to 
which they are often compared. But if it is true 
that Javanese statuary brings more delicacy and 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 273 

perfection to its representation of the life of Bud- 
dha, I nevertheless dare to affirm here, without 
fear of any scientific denial, that the Khmer statu- 
ary is far more vigorous, imaginative and varied 
than its fortunate rival in Malaysia. It is a whole 
page of history in images, or rather in reliefs, that 
we live through again in the Khmer work. What 
discoveries are waiting for the patient archaeolo- 
gist who is willing to stick doggedly to this beau- 
iful and noble task! . . . 

Along with the epic episodes of the Vedas and 
the Ramayana, along with the churning of the 
"Ocean of Milk" and the struggle between human 
beings and monkeys, one finds in them savory and 
picturesque interpretations of the Hindu paradise 
and hell. The heavens are represented by a suc- 
cession of thirty-seven aerial towers with three 
compartments each. Man in the state of blessed- 
ness, fat and jovial, occupies the central chamber: 
he has the features of a prince and is seated on a 
throne, surrounded by beautiful ladies who are 
fanning him and offering him fruits and flowers, 
or even holding out to him an oval mirror. Such 
— at least according to Brahma — are the conditions 
of perfect felicity. One might well consider them 
monotonous rather than delightful. And indeed, 
the conception of the Khmer hell seems more 



274 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

subtle even in its puerility. Let us pass in review, 
therefore, some of the tortures of the condemned, 
whom the bas-reliefs represent with their human 
faces each one more skeleton-like than the others. 
Here is the savory text: 

Inscription 6. 

"The damned who, having wealth, have never- 
theless practised works of wickedness." 

Punishment: "Condemned to be thrown upon 
thorny trees, skinned and scraped with a grater." 

Inscription 8. 

"Those who cheat or rob their neighbors." 
Punishment: "Tortured alive by demons who 

tear out their tongue and drive stakes into their 

mouth." 

Inscription 17. 

"Those who steal strong liquors or approach the 
wives of scholars." 

Punishment: "Torn by vultures and thrown 
into a lake of liquid, sticky pus." 

Inscription 23. 

"Those who take the wife of a friend." 
Punishment: "Tortured in couples, tied fast, 
larded, flung into a frying pan and cooked." 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 275 

(A punishment for adultery that strangely re- 
sembles the recipe for a good French country 
dishl) 

Inscription 27. 
"Those who steal parasols." 
Punishment: "Thrown into burning braziers," 

Inscription 30. 

"Those who steal flowers from a garden." 
Punishment: "Condemned to have the face torn 

by birds of prey, then to be later fastened to thorny 

trees and pierced by arrows." 

(One could not more severely act the part of 

the knight-guardian of the rose on its stem. — 

Pierced by arrows for having picked flowers? 

What disloyal rivalry with cruel Cupid!) 



But with your permission let us leave this Bayon, 
where too many contradictions disconcert us. 
And, crossing the encircling walls of Angkor-Tom, 
let us plunge for a few moments into the jungle. 
There await us the most extraordinary surprises 
of nature struggling with human labor and art. 

There is Ta-Prom, there are Ta-Menam and 
Ta-Keo, there is Prakhan, all those old sanctuaries 



276 MYSTERIOUS INDIA 

covered with moss and forsaken under the crum- 
bling ruins on which one puts a trembling foot — 
the anguish of sacrilege or the fear of a catas- 
trophe, who knows? — fallen pillars over which one 
has to climb like a goat, crumbling galleries where 
one slips along like a rat. And what surprising 
discoveries during this aerial and subterranean ex- 
ploration, in the half-light of a City of the Sleep- 
ing Wood, which one would swear had been drawn 
by a Gustave Dore I 

But now the purple or salmon-colored hour of 
sunset leads us back to that unequaled marvel, the 
unique and prodigious Angkor-Vat. . . . 

It rises up, the Temple, in the deep sadness of a 
dying sunset. A flush of rose-gold, then of red, 
falls full on its five massive towers where the bats, 
its only present inhabitants, are already in flight, 
wheeling and clamoring. 

It is the sacred hour, the moving hour for one to 
scale all those fairylike terraces and after them 
the monumental, the almost perpendicular stair- 
way that leads to the Holy of Holies, the Taber- 
nacle. There smile eternally, with their same 
ironic and kindly smile, the Buddhas of all sizes 
that were accumulated by the piety of the faithful ; 
there the divine Apsaras, their breasts erect, their 
hands gracefully turned palm upwards, still dance, 



DEAD HINDU CITIES 277 

supple and wanton, naked virgins haunted by noth- 
ing evil; there also, on the lower levels, grin the 
evil and shadowy Asouras. An old bonze in a 
yellow robe moves to and fro on the highest ter- 
races of the building, his eye anxious and scruti- 
nizing. He comes toward you, excuses himself, 
mumbles a smile between his black teeth, then 
lights, one by one, the lamps of the sanctuary. The 
Faith of the vanished giants who built this mirage- 
like acropolis must not be extinguished, must not 
die. 

Your head slightly bowed, you descend the 
temple steps. The humble and touching appeal of 
the yellow man has stirred you, the last echo of a 
magnificent epopee that has grown dim in this 
corner of decaying stones and under these somber 
vaults. 

Angkor-Vat has fallen asleep under the caress 
of the twilight, as the nymph Viraja, in the Sans- 
krit legend, fell asleep under the kiss of Krishna 
the Seducer. 



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